Wolf River

By JonaWolf

This story and all characters within are copyright 2003 - present to the author.

Chapter 1

The clouds lay heavily upon the land and a white curtain of snow drifted silently down to shroud the hills, draining the colours away and turning the world into washed out landscape of grey and white. Trees loomed out of the gathering darkness, a forest of towering spruces and pines that were as still and silent as death as they gathered their strength to stand against this first blast of the inevitable winter. Most of creatures that inhabited the forest were bedded down and curled about themselves, comfortable within the warmth of their bodies and waiting out the storm in the way that only animals do. The temperature had dropped a fair bit since the snow started and it was decidedly cold outside. Despite the inclement weather and the biting cold, it would appear that not all creatures were smart enough to find shelter from the weather or had the means to do so. Through the obscuring veil of the thickly falling snow, a flickering orange light could be seen. It was the only sign of life in an otherwise deserted land.

A lone figure sat morosely in front of a small fire, staring deep into the flames. Snow drifted gently down, the flakes glittering like stars in the firelight to coat the motionless figure's head and shoulders with a steadily thickening layer of white. The dancing orange firelight threw the features of the figure's face into sharp relief. At first glance, a frown appeared to be permanently etched onto his face and he himself seemed to be carved of stone. For long minutes, there was no sign of life from the solitary figure until an arm suddenly snaked out to the stack of wood that sat beside him and latched onto a log. He threw the new piece of wood on the fire and raised his head to watch the sparks fly upwards and mingle with the drifting snowflakes like a cloud of fireflies. He shook some of the clinging snow from his clothes and then leaned back and sighed.

The look of nervous fear ingrained on his features betrayed his innermost thoughts. He was in a situation that confounded him to no end.

He was lost. That was a difficult thing for a man to admit at the best of times, but he knew for a fact that he was very lost. The damndest thing about the whole deal though, was that he shouldn't be lost. He just couldn't figure it out. How does one get lost after driving to a campsite, parking the truck, setting up camp and then crashing for the night?

He just couldn't understand it. Nothing made any sense, not a single damned thing, and it had been bothering him to the point where the questions were beginning to eat into his brain in a terrifying manner.

He got up and paced around the fire for a short time, a look of intense concentration cast upon the angular features of his face. He rubbed his gloved hands together and stamped his feet in attempt to get some circulation going, and made his way through the ankle deep snow to lean against a nearby tree and stare out into the blizzard.

He was completely preoccupied with trying to figure out just what had happened to him during the night and he just stared blankly out into the white void. A crooked smile came to his face as he stood there, pondering the strangeness of his situation.

He'd gotten lost before on some of his excursions out into the wilderness, but never quite like this.

This morning had come as mornings always do near the end of October in northwestern Alberta. Cold, dark, and way too early. First he had gone through the usual morning camping routine of bringing every piece of clothing into his sleeping bag to warm it up before he put it on. Then there had been a period of perhaps five minutes where he had curled into a ball in the center of his sleeping bag and tried desperately to ignore the outside world. Eventually, and with a reluctant groan, he had left the comfortable warmth of the sleeping bag and had stumbled, bleary eyed and grumbling, out through the door of the tent and into the cold predawn gloom.

As he stood in front of his tent, stretching and yawning, he had seen a world of white and black. A thick layer of snow, perhaps four inches or so, was a new addition overnight. He had been a little surprised at the snow since it had been dry when he arrived and the forecast had been for clear and relatively warm weather over the next few days, but he paid it little attention. His morning brain functions were always at a minimum until he'd had a couple of cups of coffee.

It was only when he began to search for the necessary pieces to brew that all important cup of coffee that he began to clue in that something wasn't right. He remembered that he had left his old Coleman stove on top of the picnic table but it was nowhere to be found.

The picnic table that is.

The stove was there all right, overturned in the snow with the grill and fuel tank scattered about, but the table was inexplicably absent. He had stared dumbly at the pieces for a moment before stooping and picking them from the snow. He wandered about aimlessly for a minute or two before locating a convenient stump to set up the stove on. After assembling the pieces and lighting the stove, he had turned towards the truck to get the cooler, and stopped cold with his heart in his throat.

His truck was missing as well.

That little bit of information was better than caffeine. In an instant, he was suddenly awake and aware. He turned a slow three hundred sixty degrees, his pale eyes searching the amorphous shapes of trees and snow...

Nothing.

He stopped and scratched his head for a moment, stunned. Missing picnic table, missing truck? Just what the hell was going on here?
Picnic tables and trucks tend not to wander away by themselves. If someone had been playing some sort of sick practical joke, he should have heard something during the night. He wasn't that deep of a sleeper. There should have been some evidence in the snow as well, but there was nothing. The only tracks that marked the fresh snow had been made by his boots. He shook his head and looked up at the slowly lightening sky. Nothing added up and he was beginning to get really confused and more than a bit worried.

He slowly made his way around the campsite, searching the snow. After a couple of minutes, he found the cooler. It was lying on its side and was half embedded in a small bush. Again, there was no sign as to how it got there. The snow was untracked around it. He also found it quite strange that while there was four inches of snow on the ground around him, there was none on the cooler. He didn't quite know what to make of that but nevertheless he felt a surge of relief sweep through him. At least now he could get his caffeine fix.

He threw open the lid of the cooler and rummaged around inside. The clank of metal on metal rang out into the eerie silence. Once he had extracted a battered coffeepot and a bag of coffee, he returned to where the stove sat. He stopped for a moment.

Where's my water jug? He thought.

Coffeepot in hand, he went in search of the blue twenty litre jug. He failed to find it and with a shrug, he scooped the pot full of snow and set it on the stove, adding more as the snow in the pot melted down. He went and retrieved the cooler and carried it over to where the stove was, sat down on it and focused every last bit of his attention on the pot on the stove; listening to the gentle hiss of the flame and watching the steam rise from the pot and waiting eagerly for the water to boil.

When the water finally began to boil, he dumped in a generous amount of coffee and sat back, watching the sky gradually lighten as the coffee brewed. When the coffee was finally ready, he poured the steaming contents of the pot into a large tin mug and inhaled deeply of the delicious aroma. He took his first sip and felt a warm rush spread through his body right down to the tips of his toes. He leaned back with a happy grin on his face and let out a satisfied sigh.

The caffeine began to clear away the last remnants of sleep that fogged his mind. As more and more neurons began to fire and the day grew lighter yet, he began to take stock of his surroundings. The more he saw the more worried he became. Snow and conifer trees surrounded him as far as he could see. Of the road into the campsite and of the still missing picnic table and truck, not a sign could be seen.

Strange, so very strange, he thought. He'd been to this spot almost every year for the past ten years and he knew the exact layout of the campsite in his mind. The problem was, nothing matched. Not a single damned thing. Even the fire pit with its large ring of stones was missing. He took another sip of his coffee and made a wry face as he spit out a couple of pine needles. He glanced at his watch. It showed 8:09am. It was almost daylight now, and time to go do some exploring. With any luck, he might be able to figure out just what the heck was going on.

With a grunt, he forced himself to his feet and coffee mug in hand, started exploring the campsite. He walked in circles of an ever increasing size, eyes searching the snow and trees for any clue as to what had happened. After about five minutes, when he was about twenty metres from the tent, he came across something that was very curious. In the midst of a large area of untracked snow was an unusual imprint. His brow furrowed as he walked over to stand next to it. What he was staring at was a perfect imprint of an axe in the snow, his axe in fact. He was strangely unsettled by this bizzare discovery. There wasn't a track for metres in any direction, yet here was his axe as if it had been dropped from the sky. He scanned his surroundings for a moment then looked up to the grey sky, seeking an explanation. Finding none, he stooped and pulled his axe from the snow then retreated back to the campsite and refilled his coffee mug.

This just gets stranger and stranger, he thought. And unfortunately for him, his situation wasn't about to get any better.

After refilling his mug, he sat down on the cooler again for a few minutes, lost in thought and staring absent mindedly into the distance. It was an overcast sort of day, bringing with it the promise of more snow. Low clouds slowly drifted in the distance, seemingly just above the tips of the towering spruce trees. When the clouds parted for a short moment, he saw something in the distance that made his blood run cold. Before he had time to grasp the implications of what he saw, it was gone, hidden behind a thick layer of grey cloud. He sat transfixed, his mug halfway to his mouth, waiting to see if the apparition would manifest itself again. In short moments it reappeared. And with it, any hopes that he had of a quick end to the strange situation that he suddenly found himself in.

What had grabbed his attention so completely, was the range of jagged, snow encrusted mountain peaks that protruded above the layer of ground level cloud like the teeth of some titanic saw blade. And suddenly, realization hit him like a fist in the gut.

He shouldn't be here.

He didn't know where 'here' was.

If he was where he should have been, the nearest mountains would be some two hundred and fifty kilometres to the southwest, not right on his doorstep.

But he was where he should be! He remembered driving into the campground last night. What could have happened during the night that made him end up here?

A frown settled on his face as he contemplated this disturbing new development. For a long time he sat still while a storm of thoughts flew through his mind, then suddenly he jumped into action. Casting his now stone cold coffee aside, he grabbed his axe and went in search of a suitably dead tree. He would have preferred to use the chainsaw but it had been in the back of the truck and since he didn't have a clue where the truck had ended up, the axe would have to do. It took about perhaps five minutes for him to fell the dead spruce. After the tree was down, he took another couple of minutes to chop it in half. Breathing heavily from the exertion, he leaned the axe up against a nearby tree and then dragged the first piece of lumber back to his camp. He cleared some snow away with his boot and began to make a fire. A quick trip to the tent to retrieve his matches and then a minute or two spent breaking off the dry and brittle lower branches from the tree he had cut down and soon a wisp of smoke curled up from the carefully arranged sticks in the crude fire pit. More wood was added and soon he had a crackling fire. One more trip into the forest to retrieve his axe and the other half of the tree and then he sat down on the cooler and watched the fire.

He had spent most of the day there, sitting in front of the fire. The only times he moved from that position was to chop more wood for the fire and to take stock of what few supplies he had with him.

He had perhaps three days worth of food in the cooler, maybe more if he rationed himself. He had his overnight bag in the tent with a change of clothes, an extra sweater and a few other odds and ends. His rifle was in the tent as well, along with a single box of ammunition, his binoculars, compass, and his hunting knife. He thought about that for a moment. That would be enough to survive for some time. He had a fair bit of experience when it came to living in wild places and with luck he would have no trouble surviving until he was rescued. Or would he?

There was something about this situation that didn't sit well with him. Getting lost was one thing, but this was something else entirely. Nothing felt right. He had the strangest feeling that there was something important that he was missing, an understanding that was just out of his reach. He tried to shake the feeling off to no avail. It remained stuck in the back of his mind, hinting at something he could not yet understand...

After a deep sigh, he chuckled a bit and shook his head. Always look on the bright side, he told himself. At least he wouldn't have to go back to work on Monday. Not only that, but he might get more of a break from the insanity that was modern life than he bargained for. He returned to his fireside seat and after a moment's indecision, he threw another armload of wood on the fire and then covered the whole thing with an insulating layer of ashes and dirt. Hopefully, there would be enough heat left there in the morning to avoid having to use any more of his now precious supply of matches to restart the fire.

He stood up, stretched and yawned and made his way into the tent. Bedtime, he said to himself. Tomorrow would bring another day, and hopefully a few answers.

Sleep did not come easily among restless thoughts but eventually he drifted off.

						—Chapter 2—

 Crouched low behind the gnarled trunk of an ancient spruce, Kendri scented the wind and listened intently, her pointed ears twitching as a metallic clank rang out from the camp in front of her. Her amber eyes shifted back and forth as she watched a peculiar scene unfold some forty spans away. She carefully shifted positions and stifled a yawn as she stretched muscles cramped from sitting motionless for long hours. For a moment she was distracted as a squirrel began dropping pinecones into the snow from the top of a nearby tree. She watched it with mild interest for a moment before turning her attention back to the camp in front of her. The source of her curiosity had only recently emerged from his hut and after stretching and yawning was now poking about in the remnants of last night's fire with a stick, apparently trying to get it going again.

Such an unusual creature. Kendri had never seen anything like him in all of her years. A tailless, nearly furless giant, standing fully a head and a half taller than she and clad in strangely coloured clothing from head to toe. For five days now that she had followed this stranger, always keeping her distance, watching and learning from the shadows.
He was lost, that much was certain. Kendri had come to realize that from his actions over the past few days. He seemed nervous, ill at ease, and had spent most of his time around his camp, moving only to gather more wood to feed the almost constantly burning fire in front of his hut. She could sense the creature's anxiety and unease as he paced back and forth beside the fire and there were even a few times where a trace of fear tinged his scent as it wafted down towards her. As the days passed, his anxiety and fear grew into a sense of desperate uncertainty as his supplies of food dwindled into nothingness. The creature had made a few excursions into the forest by then, short hunting trips that he always returned from empty handed. Hunger could be a powerful motivator, Kendri knew that all too well. Her own supplies of food were dwindling fast and her hunting had only netted her the occasional rabbit or grouse. No, she said to herself as her thoughts wandered back over the last two years, she was definitely no stranger to hunger.

Day after day the creature had left his camp and went on long hunts and each one had been unsuccessful but surprising in its own way. There were a few animals around, Kendri's sharp nose could pinpoint their locations but for some reason the creature appeared to not even scent them and had walked by without out even showing a sign of interest. That both surprised and confused her. After following the stranger on a couple more hunts she had begun to wonder if he had no sense of smell. If that was truly the case, he would surely starve to death unless he got lucky and blundered onto some sort of prey.

Kendri craned her neck slightly to see over the fallen log in front of her. She watched curiously as the creature prepared for his morning hunt. He put a small pot over the fire that as it heated up gave off a spicy aroma that made her nose tingle. After a few short minutes, he poured the steaming contents of the pot into a smaller vessel that he began to slowly sip. That's all he did for a time, but shortly he stood up and threw the dregs of whatever he had been drinking into the fire. The fire hissed and sputtered and steam curled up into the cool air.

A pair of curious amber eyes watched interestedly as the he threw a huge armload of wood on the fire and then slung an unusual item that glinted of polished wood and metal over his shoulder. He gathered up a few other smaller items that he put into the pockets of his clothes or hooked on his belt and then he set out to follow one of the small creeks that wound down from the nearby hills to join the river down in the valley.

Kendri was quite sure that the creature never suspected that she had been watching him and following him for several days. She had taken great care over the last few days to keep herself downwind and hidden from view and her tracks inconspicuous. The creature never once seemed to notice that she hovered nearby, watching with curious eyes, and this day was no different. With hardly a glance in her direction the stranger walked barely ten spans away from her hiding place on his way out hunting, or whatever it was that he was going to do. Kendri waited patiently for him to pass before following stealthily in the shadows, keeping track of her quarry with perked ears and a sensitive nose.

He was easy to follow, this strange creature, He walked steadily, putting some distance between himself and his camp before settling into a walk that was so slow that it was almost a stalk. She could sense the change in him when he slowed. He became more alert and his eyes scanned the trees for any sign of movement. There were periods where he stopped and listened for some time before he began his painfully slow walk again. He walked straight upwind but never seemed to read the scents borne upon the gentle breeze that blew from the northwest. He carried cradled in his arms what she was beginning to think was some kind of weapon, a short spear perhaps. It flashed polished wood and metal whenever caught by a stray beam of sunlight that managed to pierce through the clouds and the canopy of branches overhead.

Half an hour into the hunt, the stranger stopped suddenly and stared intently down at the snow. It was then that Kendri realized that the creature had found the tracks she had left in the snow the day before when she had taken a break from watching the creature and had gone out to find her afternoon meal. She quietly cursed herself for leaving such a conspicuous trail and settled down nervously to watch the creature's reaction. He seemed fascinated by her tracks. Kendri watched as he knelt down to get a closer look. He pulled a thin covering off of one paw and traced a bare finger around the edges of one of her footprints. He stayed in that position for some time, one paw scratching absently at his chin while he stared at the prints in the snow. When he stood up, he placed his foot beside her tracks and compared the print that was left in the powdery snow. He stared at the tracks for a long time before his head came up and he then took a long look in the direction the prints led. With renewed energy in his steps, he began to follow the trail. For several hours, he followed Kendri's old tracks while she followed him. It was only when snow began to spiral down from the leaden sky did he come to a halt. He looked down the trail ahead of him, then back along the way he came. His whole body slumped a bit and he shook his head and muttered something. He looked up at the grey sky and the heavy flakes of snow floating down and turned back the way he came. Kendri was grateful for the distraction that the snow provided. She wasn't sure what the creature would do when he found that the tracks eventually led right back to his camp. A change seemed to have come over the stranger as he turned back towards his camp. He seemed hopeful and even more alert than he had been before. Now he knew there was something else out there that also walked on two legs, he would be on the lookout for whoever had left those tracks behind in the snow, but whether or not the he realized that he was being watched was another matter. Kendri didn't think so but she decided to be extra cautious when it came to choosing her hiding places and she would try and stick to trails where there were already many tracks.

Kendri hung back for a moment and when the stranger had disappeared from view, she approached the trail he had been following with the utmost caution. The snow was coming down steadily by now, already filling in the old prints that she and the creature had left in the snow. Snow swirled around her as she regarded the tracks. Her tracks were small compared to the creature's, like comparing an adult's prints to a pup's. The thought came to her as she stood silently in the falling snow that she and the creature were likely the only ones within a moon's worth of travelling that could make such prints. She felt a pang of sadness at that thought and she turned away, fading into the snow and disappeared into the trees, taking up the stranger's trail once again.

The next hour or so had passed rather uneventfully and Kendri stifled a yawn as she hid behind the clump of roots left by a fallen tree. She considered curling up and taking a short nap under the shelter of the gnarled deadfall. Not much snow had managed to accumulate under the overhanging roots and the exposed moss was soft and inviting. She yawned again and turned lazily in a circle a few times, the creature would undoubtedly find his way back to his camp on his own. She could catch up with him later. She peered around the edge of her sanctuary one last time before lying down and was startled to see that the creature had disappeared. All thoughts of a nap were forgotten and she sniffed the air carefully. The creature's scent was still strong on the wind, but she also scented something else carried on the breeze. There was a deer nearby. Her nose told her the story. The deer was a doe and it wasn't too far away, somewhere around three hundred spans upwind. The scent made her stomach rumble as her instincts registered it as food. She had eaten the last remnants of the rabbit she caught two days ago for her evening meal yesterday, and her hunger now awoke with renewed fury. A grin split her muzzle and she crept stealthily out of her hiding place, all of her senses on edge.

The creature had not disappeared, as Kendri had first thought. He had simply just passed over the crest of a small rise and vanished from her sight. She soon caught up with him as he stalked his slow stalk back to camp. The enticing scent of the deer filled her nostrils and she thought about what to do. The creature seemed to be heading right towards the deer. Perhaps he would get lucky and manage to kill it. If not and he passed it by like all the other animals he had come close to over the past days, she would try her luck again and pray for a kill.

Every so slowly the creature crept forward. The deer was now only about one hundred fifty spans way now, and still he seemed not to notice that there was food literally right in front of his muzzle. Kendri waited on edge for when he would finally begin his stalk in earnest. It was a few more minutes and another twenty-five spans closer before he reacted. He stopped suddenly and stayed very still for a moment, eyes focused dead ahead. A sudden thrill went through Kendri. He finally sees it! The creature slowly pulled its weapon off of its shoulder and began to stalk more purposefully. Kendri could sense his excitement; it radiated from him like heat from a fire. He crouched down, almost on his knees and darted beside a large tree. Now only a hundred spans away, she could just barely see the deer through the trees and the falling snow. It was walking along the edge of the trees across the creek and was moving slowly towards them. Kendri began to formulate a plan. From what she could see, the trail that the deer was following continued down towards her and passed by her hiding spot about ten spans to her right. With luck and patience all they would have to do was wait. They were both on the downwind side of the trail and the creature was about thirty spans farther up the trail than she was. If he missed his chance, he might scare the deer towards her and she might be able to spear it as it ran past, even if it meant revealing her presence to the creature. She looked up towards the creature to see what he was preparing to do. A frown came to her muzzle as she watched him steady his weapon against the tree beside him and point it towards the deer. What is he doing? She though. If he doesn't wait he'll scare off the deer and...

An unexpected and unbelievably loud clap of thunder roared from the weapon that the creature held in his paws and he twitched as if struck by a giant invisible hand. It felt as if a hole had been torn through the very air and Kendri nearly jumped right out of her fur. She felt a physical blow from the blast and saw snow shake loose from the branches of trees in front of the creature.

Stunned, Kendri cringed in fear behind the fallen log that gave her cover, ears plastered back against her skull and her tail between her legs. The creature got up and took off running even before the echoes of the blast had totally died away. She was still trying to comprehend what had just happened when she heard a whoop of joy from the creature. Impossible! He couldn't have killed it from that distance! But her nose didn't lie. The scent of fresh blood drifted down to her, making her mouth water despite her fear. This unusual creature was obviously more powerful than she had thought. It had a weapon that could kill a deer at one hundred spans distance. She could hardly see a deer at one hundred spans, never mind kill it at that distance. Before, she wasn't sure what the creature would do if it ever spotted her. Now she was terrified that if he did, he might use his weapon with it's Power of Thunder against her.
She cowered behind the fallen tree for a long time, unsure of what to do or what was going to happen. The creature had long since finished cleaning out the carcass of the deer and only short minutes ago had passed so close by her hiding place that she could have reached out and poked him with the end of her spear. He continued on without noticing her and headed down towards his camp with the deer slung over his shoulders, leaving a trail of bright red blood droplets on the snow. It was only several minutes after he had passed out of hearing range that she dared to stick her head out of her hiding place. Much to her chagrin her ears were still plastered to her head and it took a conscious effort to hold them up. After waiting a few more minutes, just to be sure the creature was gone she cautiously picked her way towards the creek and read the story of the hunt by the tracks in the snow. Sure enough, the deer had been nearly a hundred spans away when it was killed. The deer's tracks showed where it had been hit by something. The tracks showed a normal walking speed, and then abruptly they turned into running tracks. Shortly after the transition between walking and running, bright red spots of blood, lung blood, began to litter the snow. Only fifteen or so spans from where the deer had been hit did it finally fall. The snow was packed down here and the creature had left the guts in a pile on the snow. After a moment’s indecision, she picked through the entrails with the end of her spear to see if the creature had left anything edible there. Much to her dismay, there was only the stomach, intestines, lungs and other inedible organs. She grimaced distastefully. Hungry she was, but not that hungry. Instead, she used the point of her spear to chip a chunk of frozen blood and snow loose and threw it into her mouth, heedless of the deer hairs sticking to it, She chewed slowly, letting the metallic taste trickle down her throat while she stood deep in thought. A part of her wondered if the creature would perhaps share some of his kill, but she quickly pushed that idea away. She would return to the cabin tonight and let the creature have his feast. She needed to meditate and clear her mind to help her to understand what she had just witnessed. There was something very strange about this creature. Perhaps during her meditation, if she could sink deep enough into the life-force that joins all things together, she might be able to find his specific thread. If she was very lucky, she might find something there that would answer some of her questions. 

						—Chapter3—

 The snow had stopped sometime during the night and the clouds had drifted off to dump snow on the lands somewhere to the east. A bubble of crystal clear blue sky blossomed overhead in the wake of the storm and the woods were still and silent. The sun was just on its way up and the first rays of sunlight lit up the snow covered peaks of the mountains to the west. It was the start of what looked to be a spectacular day.

The sound of gentle snoring drifted out into the still air, disturbing the silence of an otherwise idyllic morning. A partially collapsed orange tent that stuck out among the trees like a sore thumb looked to be the source of this noise. Inside the tent, cocooned in a military green sleeping bag buried under a pile of clothes, was a vaguely human shaped lump. There was no activity from the lump for several minutes until there was an abrupt end to the snoring. After another moment of stillness, the lump stirred and a head poked out and blinked blearily at the morning light that filtered in through the tent walls. Just as quickly as it had appeared, the head retreated back into the warmth of the sleeping bag. There was some more movement followed by a prolonged groan. Shortly, a hand emerged from the sleeping bag and rummaged through the pile of clothes. It latched onto a pair of blue jeans and withdrew back into sanctuary. After a moment of silence, there was a muffled exclamation and the form hidden in the depths of the sleeping bag thrashed about briefly before settling into a quivering silence. It was cold out there this morning.

Perhaps an hour or so later, bundled up in a heavy winter jacket, toque and gloves to ward off the freezing temperatures he sat once again on the cooler in front of the fire. A steaming mug of coffee was cradled in his hands which he sipped in an absent-minded manner as he pondered his situation for the thousandth time.

It was the morning of day six now, and he was starting to get really worried. On his explorations into the surrounding forest he had come across no cut lines, clear cuts, power lines or even a hint of anything man made. It was disturbing and he was starting to wonder if something was really wrong. It was like humans had never been here before. He shook away the unease that crawled up his spine and took another swig of his coffee. Steam wreathed his head, freezing into tiny spheres of ice that clung to his eyebrows and his toque. He scratched the six day old stubble on his chin and sighed. The lack of any evidence of other humans, he could deal with that without a whole lot of problems. After all, there were possibilities that presented themselves on that front. He could be stranded in the middle of a national park or some sort of wildlife preserve or something like that. That would explain a few things. However, there was one thing that he was having trouble with. The few animals he had seen over the past few days didn't react to him as he thought they should have. He was having a difficult time believing it, but it seemed that they didn't have the instinctual fear of humans that was so commonplace that it was taken for granted. He frowned as he contemplated his half empty mug of coffee. The deer that he had shot yesterday sure didn't react to him the way he thought it should have. Instead of running, it had stopped and stared at him curiously, offering him an easy shot. He shook his head slowly from side to side. He really hoped he'd just been relocated to a national park or something, as unlikely as that was beginning to appear. The alternative was just too disturbing to contemplate.

Fortunately, a faint glimmer of hope had found it's way into his thoughts. His food problem had been solved for the time being and on his hunt yesterday he had come across some tracks in the snow that he thought had been made by another person. He wasn't one hundred percent sure though. The small prints had been ill defined in the loose snow, but he was fairly certain that someone walking with a bipedal gait had made them. The prints just didn't look right to him though, and he wasn't quite sure why. He had followed them for a couple of hours before snow began to fall again and he was forced to turn back. As soon as the snow had stopped, he had returned to the forest and tried to find the tracks again. He had no success in his search even though he had spent the better part of half a day wandering through the trees. Despite his failure, it had come as no small amount of comfort to realize that there was someone else out here in this wilderness besides himself. With a little luck, the person that made those tracks might see the smoke from his fire and come and investigate. If the unknown stranger did show up, he hoped that he'd bring a few answers with him. He was getting the feeling that he was going to go insane soon if he didn't figure what had happened to him and where he had ended up

He reached over and refilled his coffee mug from the pot that was suspended over the fire on the end of a large stick. He sat still for a moment before he stood up. Well, he thought, since his chances of being rescued seemed to be getting more and more remote with each passing day, he figured was time to set up a more permanent camp. He had found a good location right beside a small stream not too far from where he had shot the deer. There was a small clearing beside the stream there and he thought that it would be a good location. It had good access to fresh water, a nice view overlooking the valley and it was good and wide open so maybe a search plane would be able to see him if one flew overhead. The only problem with the new campsite was that it lay about kilometre and a half away and it was uphill the whole way. Even with his meagre supplies, that still meant three or four trips. He didn't relish the thought. Just the effort from butchering the deer and bringing it back to the camp yesterday had left him with enough sore muscles for one day. Now he was going to have to drag everything, including the remains of that deer back up that damned hill again. To make matters worse, his backpack and coil of rope were wherever his truck was, and that was still a mystery. He let out a big sigh and moved over to the tent. He disappeared inside for a moment then emerged with an armload of paraphernalia. He dumped it unceremoniously into the snow and began to dismantle the tent, an unhappy frown on his face the whole time. Muffled curses drifted out into the still air as he fought with the tent poles.

There were few things he hated more than moving.

*******************

Kendri paced back and forth inside the cabin like a caged animal, her ears flat against her skull and eyes wide with concern. There was something very strange going on, and she was worried about what path she would follow from now on. She was beginning to have a faint understanding of what was happening and to be truthful, it scared her half to death. She suddenly felt as if she was no longer in control of her own life.

She stopped her pacing for a moment and went outside to sit on the edge of the porch. She drew her knees up to her chest and breathed in deeply, taking in the scents on the breeze. She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly, trying to calm her frayed nerves. It was such a beautiful morning, but she had too many confused thoughts running through her mind to be able to enjoy it. It appeared that after two long years, that some of the pieces of the puzzle were finally coming together. Memories of events that she had tried so hard to forget had been brought to the surface, a strange creature had been dropped from the sky, and now she faced a crucial decision. She sighed and rested her muzzle on her paws. What the final outcome of all this strangeness would be was still a mystery.

She had returned to the cabin the previous night intending to meditate, something that always helped to calm her down and sort things out, but for some reason she was unable to. Meditation required discipline and good control over one's mind, and not for the first time, she had wondered if she was starting to lose her mind. Time after time, she had tried to calm herself, to quiet the confused jumble of thoughts that cluttered up the inside of her head and sink into the meditation trance, but it was always just out of her reach. She kept snapping back to awareness and finding herself staring at the wall in confusion. She became more and more frustrated each time she didn't succeed and after several hours of failed attempts, she let out an exasperated snarl and gave up. Her failure was troubling but she pushed it from her mind and tried to concentrate on other things. She went out to the old shack next to the cabin where she kept her stores of food, and hacked a small chunk of frozen meat from the meagre remains of a quarter that hung from the rafters. She returned to the cabin and turned her attention to cooking a small meal. When she was done eating, she spent a short few minutes grooming herself as best as she could with her blunt claws before she curled up on an old deerskin and tried to get some sleep.

Sleep did not come easily. She had tossed and turned as the days events played over and over in her head. How could that creature have killed a deer when it was so far away that she could hardly see it? She remembered the tales told to her by her father when she was a pup, the ones about the monsters that lived in the clouds and threw bolts of lightning from their outstretched paws. Could this creature be one of those monsters? She didn't know what to think. The weapon it carried unleashed the sound of thunder, but the creature itself seemed too frail, too mortal to be one of the monsters from the old stories. She lay on her back and stared at the ceiling for what had felt like half the night, struggling with old memories, almost hearing her father's voice whispering to her from the shadowy corners of the cabin. She eventually rolled on to her side and faced the door of the cabin, contemplating the unknown that lay beyond that door, hidden away in his strange hut down in the depths of the valley. Those old stories she remembered were told just to scare pups anyway she told herself, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to completely believe that. No, perhaps not a monster from the old stories, but whatever that creature was, it was powerful. She felt drawn to it for some odd reason, maybe because his situation was so similar to the one she had endured for the last two years. Both of them were alone and both of them were far from home...

She had stood up, stretched and yawned briefly and then turned in a circle a few times before curling up again. Finally, she managed to drift off to sleep.

The dream had swept over her with the terrifying swiftness of a summer thunderstorm as soon as she closed her eyes. Images flared to life and died in a single instant, emotions were tossed about like leaves in the wind...

The dream solidified and she found herself standing on the open grassy plains where she had lived for so long. The sun was up high and shone like a diamond in the cloudless sky. A warm wind gently swayed the long grasses and she looked around at the rolling hills that receded into the distance. She hung her head and did her best to fight back the tears that threatened to flow all to freely. It took her a moment but she got her emotions under control, enough that she was able to raise her head and look upon the scene that stretched out before her. It was her old home, a place that she could never return to. A tear trickled from the corner of her eye and crept down the side of her muzzle.

A remnant of sadness still pervaded this place. Where once there had been the happy cries and laughter of pups at play, now only the wind whispered mournfully through the long grass. The Great Circle, where generations had sung and danced their thanks to Creation had all but disappeared. Only a stone or two scattered through the grass hinted that there had once been anything there. Of the rest of the village, scarcely a trace remained. Nearby, a circular depression showed where a hut had once stood. A family had likely lived there, a mated pair, their pups, grandparents, maybe even a cousin or two. A family who's bones were now scattered about, glaring white against the green grass. Overcome by emotion, she sank to her knees and cried, the tears running down to soak the fur below her eyes. Why did it have to happen this way? She asked herself for the thousandth time, her despair giving way to anger. So many lives had been lost for no reason. She shook her fist in anger and yelled at the sky. What had they done to deserve this? Only the whispers of the wind reached her ears. She regained some of her composure and rose unsteadily to her feet. The ghosts would never leave this place, she could hear their mournful voices whispering on the wind. She turned and walked away, wishing that she was able to forget all of the family and friends that had been left behind in this place. She stopped and looked over her shoulder one last time before fleeing this place of sadness as she had the day that her life had been ripped away from her. She fled west towards the distant hills, vainly trying to leave the whispers of the ghosts behind her. She ran for what seemed like hours, she ran until she had nothing left. Panting hard, she crested a hill and stopped. The sun was just on the horizon and as the last rays of light from the setting sun gave way under the oncoming darkness, she gathered her breath and let loose an anguished howl that rang with despair and pain. As the last echoes of that howl faded into the sunset, she collapsed to the ground, totally spent. It took so much effort just to think. Her anger and pain had evaporated but nothing yet had taken their place. The sky radiated fantastic colours of red and yellow as the sun went down but she did not see it. She sat within the silence of her mind, hearing only the faintest echo of the world around her.

For a time she sat there, her perceptions clouded by the complete withdrawl of sensation. Then slowly, her consciousness surfaced from the depths and she opened her eyes to a new world.

She no longer sat on the open plains among the undulating hills but instead sat high on a rocky outcrop surrounded by stunted spruce trees, the sun shining bright above her. A cool breeze brushed gentle fingers through her fur as she gazed out over the forested valley that stretched out below her. She pushed herself to her feet and shielded her eyes from the sun as she turned in a slow circle, surveying her new surroundings. Jagged, snow encrusted mountains loomed up from the horizon to the west. The valley whispered to her, calling her down into its depths. She descended among the rocks and the trees until she stood alongside a well used trail. From there it only seemed natural that she should follow it. Several hundred spans later and she found herself at the bottom of a small hill. She could see the cabin through the trees and followed the trail to the edge of a small clearing. The cabin was perched on the crest of the hill, a wisp of smoke rising from the chimney, and a lone figure out front gathering an armload of wood. She sniffed the air carefully, cautious as always. She let out a joyful bark and ran the rest of the way up the hill with happy grin and her tail wagging furiously as she recognized Rennik, her old friend. Rennik slowly turned to face her, features and body changing in one fluid motion as he did so, transforming into the creature that she had been following the last four days. The creature raised a paw in greeting...

And Kendri had jumped awake.

She never did get back to sleep after that. The dream had left her feeling so twisted up inside that she was almost at the point of breaking down into tears. Only once before had she ever had a dream that was so perfectly real that she could feel the grass beneath the pads of her feet and feel the sunshine warm against her fur. That dream had come to her nearly two years ago. In it, she had been shown the way to this deserted old cabin on the north wall of the valley. What really concerned her was that both dreams were almost identical. They both started out at her old home and they both held the same feelings of despair and sadness but the first one had ended abruptly when she had reached the cabin. Rennik and the creature were not in it. That raised a few questions and perhaps gave her a clue.

Kendri had always felt that she had been led to this old shack that clung precariously to the north wall of the valley, high above the sparkling river that wound its way through the trees in the distance. For what reason she had been drawn to this place, she never knew. It had taken her considerable time to overcome her loss and come to grips with the knowledge that everyone and everything she knew was gone forever. She had recovered somewhat, but the old wounds had never fully healed. Now she was beginning to have an inkling of what was going on and why she had been led out here to this unknown and inhospitable wilderness.

The dreams held the key.

As she sat on the edge of the porch watching the shadows of the trees inch across the clearing, her ears perked up and the faintest of smiles came to her muzzle. The words for father told her when she was about to come of age echoed in her head.

"Where one will fail, two may succeed. One person is just that. One. Alone. It is only by working together that we are able to survive. That is the way of the pack".

She stood up and stretched, smiling into the warmth of the sun. She felt as if a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

Kendri had made her decision.

					—Chapter 4—

 A solitary figure was glimpsed through the dense trees, appearing and disappearing among the close knit trunks of the jack pines in an almost ghostlike manner. Bent forward with a great load on his back, he drifted through the mottled shadows and shafts of sunlight with purpose in his strides. He struggled through the snow with laboured steps until he came to the bottom of a steep incline. There he cast off his burden, struggled a few steps free of it and bent forwards, resting his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. A short moment later, he straightened up, wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. His face contorted in a grimace of pain and a groan escaped between his lips as he put a hand to his aching back.

He hated this hill, and he unconsciously ground his teeth as his eyes followed the narrow trail that wound between the trees and up the incline. He hated this hill as much as it was possible to hate a dirt covered mound of rock that grew trees like weeds. After fighting his way up the incline twice already this morning, he felt that it was a hate well deserved. There was really no easy way around the hill that didn't involve hiking for a couple of hours and this spot had seemed like the easiest place to scramble up the hill. The lines of his face settled into a deep frown and he rubbed his left elbow in an absent minded manner. On his first trip up the side of the hill he had found out the hard way that some measure of care was needed at this particular part of the trail. He had been halfway to the top and he had lost his footing when his pack shifted. He had landed hard on his side in the snow and started sliding down the hill, picking up a terrifying amount of speed with each metre that he slid. A tree finally interrupted his slide just before hit got to the bottom of the hill and he had bruised his left elbow when he collided with it. No permanent damage had been done but his fall had served as a painful reminder that to injure himself out here in the middle of nowhere could have severe, perhaps even fatal consequences. He sighed and tried to stretch the cramped muscles in his back. He was getting really tired and to make matters worse, the sun had warmed the day to somewhere just above the freezing point and the softening snow was becoming treacherously slippery.

He took the few steps back to his burden on rubbery legs. After staring at it for a few moments, deciding how best to get it back up on his back again with as little pain as possible, he stooped down and took hold of the pack. With a great heave of his arms, he threw it over his shoulder. So heavy was the pack and so tired was he that he almost toppled over backwards. He caught himself at the last moment and staggered a few steps forward. Bent forwards like an old man under his burden once more, he caught his breath for a moment. His pale eyes followed the trail up the incline, calculating, judging the best path. Forty metres he figured. Forty metres of clawing his way up through thawing snow, sharp branches and the raspy trunks of trees, that would get him to the top of the hill. There the ground levelled off somewhat and the going was easier. From the crest of the hill, it would be perhaps three hundred or so metres northwards before he reached his new camp and could finally rest.

Thank God this was his last trip. Another would surely kill him.

*******************

Morning had relaxed into early afternoon and the sun had climbed to the peak of its shallow arc over the hills to the south. A feeble yet welcome warmth accompanied the gentle breeze that blew from the west as Kendri stepped off the porch of the cabin and made her way down the trail towards the distant valley and the unknown that lay within it. She walked easily and out in the open, no longer taking great care in hiding her tracks and remaining unseen, for now she wanted to reveal her existence to the strange creature camped in the valley below.

She was uncertain as to what the future would hold, and a slight trace of fear raced down her spine as her thoughts wandered to the meeting that lay ahead.

Was she doing the right thing?

She had to be. It just felt right, as if that was the way things must be, but still the fear lingered upon her like a cold hand on her shoulder. The creature had a weapon that carried the Power of Thunder, and she had nothing to counter that but a spear tipped with the broken blade of a corroded old knife. What possible use would that be against a weapon so deadly that it could kill at a distance of one hundred spans?

None. She would be dead before she came close enough to cast her spear against him. She shivered a bit at that thought.

It wouldn't come to that, she felt it. Or did she? On some level she knew that no blood would be shed. Perhaps it had something to do with the dream that she had last night.

She paused a moment on the crest of a ridge amongst a few scraggly pines and gathered her thoughts as the wind swirled around her. The creature's camp was close, only five hundred or so spans away.

The dream. The creature. Both seemed to be intertwined with her in some strange way. The utter reality of the dream made it seem more along the lines of a vision. Such visions were not unheard of but they were rare. Usually they were omens of the future, either good or bad, and came only to those who had the power within them to act upon what was revealed to them. She sadly shook her head. Such things were so confusing. She was no Seer and she had not sought any vision, yet the vision had come, unstoppable as the turning of the seasons. Had she been among a village of her people, she would at least have had the counsel of the Elders and the Seers to assist her in understanding what she had seen and why she had seen it. But here, in this vast track of unknown land, she had only herself and she was unsure of the meaning, if any, of what she had seen. She had felt no evil in her vision, only sadness and despair. Yet, at the very end, as the vision or dream or whatever it was fading into consciousness, there was also a faint sense of hope that lingered and that is what she must have latched on to. A faint hope that perhaps old wounds could be healed and that maybe her long exile had come to an end.

Aaagh! But it was also so bewildering, she thought. Maybe she had tricked herself into believing that such things were possible because that is what her heart desired most. She couldn't be sure. Maybe her vision had just been nothing more than a strange dream.

She stood on the ridge a moment longer, racked with indecision. She almost turned back, but she forced herself on. She had resolved herself to seek out the creature and she would carry out this deed. Without another thought, she once again took up the trail towards his camp.

As she neared the camp, she circled around upwind, hoping to give the creature some advance warning of her approach and not take him totally by surprise, for surprising such a creature as the one that waited down in the valley might provoke a nasty reaction. She walked as much in the open as she could, no longer afraid of making noise or being seen. Closer she came, until she was only about a hundred spans from the creature's camp. As she approached closer yet, the feeling that something was wrong ran through her mind on light feet. She paused for a moment and cocked her head, senses straining to pick out anything unnatural or threatening from the background whispers of the forest. When she had assured herself that there was nothing wrong, she continued her approach. She passed out of the trees and into plain view with her heart pounding and her shaking paws gripping her spear tightly. She blinked in surprise when she saw that nothing remained of the creature's camp except trampled snow and a black pit where the ever-present fire had once flickered and burned.

Kendri stopped, surprised and confused. Had the creature disappeared as suddenly as he had arrived?

Warily, she sniffed the wind and silently cursed herself for being so bold on her approach. Perhaps she had scared the stranger away. That thought brought a sudden chuckle to her throat.

Scared him away? Was she so terrifying? To her, it was an amusing thought, but her laughter came to an abrupt halt when she realized that she might not be far off the mark.

She had not thought of the possibility of the stranger being afraid of her. She had assumed that a creature with his kind of power would not fear much. Perhaps he did after all. Kendri thought hard on that question for a moment. Perhaps, she was as strange and different to the creature as he was to her...

With caution once more on her mind, Kendri crept into the creature's camp for the first time. She sniffed here and there amid the trampled snow, seeking clues as to the reason for the stranger's swift departure. His scent traces were old, with the most recent of them from sometime this morning, but she was not certain. At length she came to the fire pit and crouched down before it. The fire seemed to be long dead. She used the blunt end of her spear to stir the ashes and held an outstretched paw over the cinders. A feeble warmth rose to greet the pads of her fingers.

Kendri scratched her muzzle thoughtfully. Five hours she guessed, that was when the fire had last been tended. She rose to her feet and stood silently for a moment. Some of the scent traces here seemed more recent than that. One in particular she could pick out without much trouble. It shared the same characteristics as the other scent traces, yet it was different. It was heavier, thicker and carried with it an underlying hint of... Salt?

Now that is strange, she said to herself.

She followed that scent trail, trace by trace through the trampled snow until she came to the edge of the camp. There she found a trail that led northwards. It had been traveled several times by the creature's heavy feet. Twice out, twice back and out once more. She was perplexed by this strange trail and crouched long in thought before it.

The subtle irony of this situation made Kendri laugh for a moment. Just when she pulled together enough courage to reveal herself, the creature disappears. All the trouble she went through of circling around to the upwind and taking her time to come to the camp had been wasted effort. A crooked smile came to her muzzle. She could have saved a lot of time by just walking straight on in from the downwind side. Then she would have known far sooner that the creature had departed to parts unknown. She pushed herself to her feet and looked down the trail that led away from the abandoned camp. There was nothing left for her here. She would follow this trail to its conclusion, and then perhaps she would gain some answers to her many questions.

**************

The gentle gurgling of the nearby by stream was a welcome distraction as the stranger sat on a boulder a short distance from the bank of the stream. Never before in his life had he been as tired as he was now. So deep was his weariness that he didn't know if he would be able to pry himself from the stone that he sat upon.

He had managed to move everything from his old camp in three laborious trips. Though he had started early in the morning it had nevertheless taken him the better part of the day to complete the task. Now as the sun sank ever lower towards the mountains in the west, he still had much work to do. He still had to gather more firewood, and he had only just begun work on a crude lean-to next to a large boulder. He had to at least finish some sort of shelter before night came, even if that meant setting up the tent again. Sleeping out in the snow was not an option, no matter how tired he was.
Firewood wasn't a serious problem. There was plenty near at hand, though most of it was still standing. Shelter was another matter. He had cleared snow from the ground around a large boulder that was almost two-thirds his height and the beginnings of a lean-to were taking shape. From the dim recesses of his memory came a faint recollection of things learned years ago in a survival course. One of these was that a shelter could be built around or next to a large stone. If a fire was built right against such a boulder, the stone would heat up and continue to radiate heat long after the fire died down. With winter was well on its way, he needed all the help he could get if he was to survive through it. That extra bit of warmth could mean the difference between life or a slow death from hypothermia in the long, cold nights ahead. With this in mind he had started a small fire next to the large boulder and then gathered a pile of stones together and placed them about two and half metres from the large boulder. He had then cut a few long thin trees to serve as a frame for the sloping roof that would give him shelter from the unpredictable weather in these parts, but he had yet to start on the roof.

With a groan he forced himself to his feet and slung his rifle over his shoulder, grimacing as he felt a twinge in his spine. Ignoring the pain from overworked muscles as best as he could, he walked on rubbery legs over to where his axe leaned up against the cooler. Stiffly he stooped over and took hold of it and then went in search of some green spruce boughs to serve as a roof for his crude shelter.

Three times he came back to the boulder with his arms laden with branches, making a large pile right next to it. On his last trip, he figured that he had enough to do the job. He leaned the axe up against the stone, deposited the rifle on top of the cooler and began to assemble the roof of his shelter.

As he worked, he began to get the strangest feeling that he was being watched. He couldn't shake it off. When he turned to work on his shelter, a prickling sensation grew between his shoulder blades, as if someone were boring holes in his back with their eyes. When he turned to look, there was nothing there. It was the strangest feeling and it was beginning to make him uneasy. He stopped working and listened intently for a minute. Nothing but the gurgling of the creek and the wind in the trees came to his ears. His faded blue eyes searched for any hint of an observer but found nothing but rocks, trees and snow.

Creepy, he thought and he muttered something unintelligible under his breath.

With a shake of his head he turned back to the task at hand. He finished laying the spruce branches down and then went and fetched his old orange tent. He put the old tent on top of the layer of spruce branches to help waterproof the roof and weighted it down with a few carefully placed stones. Hopefully the bright orange tent would serve as a beacon to any rescue that may come.

He stood back and examined his work with satisfaction. Outwardly it looked hideous, especially with the old tent spread out on top of it. The lean-to would not be comfortable by any means but it should at least be relatively warm and dry, which was more than could be said of the tent over the last few days.

Enough work for today, he thought, He was weary beyond words and longed to lie down and sleep but he still had things to do. The lean-to was complete for the most part, and he had enough firewood to last him through until the next day. However, the strenuous effort of moving all of his gear and setting up his new camp had left him with a ravenous hunger. Deer steaks would go quite well right about now, he said to himself as he went over to the cooler and retrieved a large cast iron frying pan and a tin plate.

He ambled over to where he had dropped the remains of the deer he had shot the day before. He had used the hide as a sort of crude bag to carry the meat in during the move. With some effort, he bent aside the frozen skin and skewered a particularly tasty looking morsel with the point of his hunting knife and deposited it in the frying pan. He took a few moments to slice the half frozen meat into smaller chunks before he set the frying pan carefully on the fire.

Soon the air was filled with a delicious aroma as the slices of venison sizzled and cooked. With great care he tended the meat, using the point of the knife to move them about, making sure it was cooked just right. As he cooked, again the overpowering feeling of being watched came over him. His brows drew together and he turned his head to the side for a moment. Then slowly, he stood up and turned around. As his eyes met the Watcher's, he jerked back in surprise, and the knife in his hand fell with a thud into the snow.

For a moment he thought he had gone mad, that reality had slipped from his grasp and the fine line between sanity and insanity had finally been crossed. For the first time in his life, he questioned what his eyes revealed to him, for some twenty metres away stood an impossibility.

He stood still as stone, jaw hanging open and staring openly at a creature that he knew could not, should not exist.

It stood before him, a creature perhaps five feet tall, wearing a simple leather cloak with a belt about its waist and bearing a spear as long as it was tall. A creature covered in fur from head to toe.

A wolf. That is what registered in his shocked mind. It had the typical grey wolf markings, a cream coloured underfur with black tipped guard hairs scattered throughout, black rimmed triangular ears, piercing amber eyes and a tail that waved gently to and fro. But it could not be a wolf, for it stood on two legs as well as any human could.

More as a reflex than anything else, he covered the distance between the rifle on the cooler and himself in two long strides. He snatched up the rifle and stood at the ready, eyes warily upon the creature before him. As soon as he grabbed the gun, a change came over the creature's posture. Its triangular ears went flat against its head and it cringed as thought awaiting a blow. When he did nothing but stare back, an incredible thing happened.

The creature regained some of its composure and held out its spear with both hands. Then, making sure he watched every move, it bent over and laid the weapon in the snow and then stepped away from it, holding out empty hands to show that it was now unarmed.

He blinked in surprise. Did he really just see that? His mouth hung open and he stood rooted to the spot, unsure of what to do next. The creature looked back, fear in its amber eyes, ears flicking up then down again in indecision. He swore that he saws its hands shaking.

It was impossible to misunderstand the meaning of what he had just witnessed. The creature meant him no harm, it had shown him in its own way that it was not a threat to him. After a moment's indecision, he lowered his weapon and then placed it back upon the cooler. He took a deep breath and then stepped forward holding his now empty hands out at arms length, palms upward, mimicking the creature's actions.

The creature's ears perked up and the tail began to gently wag. Now what? he thought. They stared at each other, wondering what the next move was until sudden inspiration struck.

Food! The creature had probably been attracted by the smell of his cooking. He thought furiously for a moment, then came to a decision. He went over to the fire and removed the frying pan from it. He scraped half of what was in it onto a tin plate and then stepped forward towards the creature with the plate in hand. The creature cringed once again but despite the show of fear, he could see it sniff the air hungrily. Deciding not to risk approaching any further, he set the plate on a convenient rock and then retreated to the fire.

He took the frying pan in hand and using the point of his hunting knife, he began to eat his meal. The whole time, his eyes never left the creature.

Wary at first, it began to creep closer to the plate on the stone. Its amber eyes flickered back and forth between him and the rifle on the cooler. It stopped a few meters short of the food and sniffed the air again. Obviously, it was unsure of this gift. It crept closer yet, eyes never leaving him until it snatched up the plate with a hand and scurried back several paces.

As he slowly chewed his slightly charred dinner, he watched with utter amazement as the creature downed the meat that was on the plate in a matter of seconds. After that, it held the plate in both hands and licked it clean before coming carefully forward to deposit it on the rock.

Boy, it must have been hungry, he thought.

The wolf like creature seemed a little happier now. It's ears perked up and a spark burned in its eyes. Its tail was wagging freely now and he swore that he saw the thing smile at him. Then, without warning the wolf picked its spear from the snow and raised a hand as if in farewell. He looked up in surprise from his meal and watched as it abruptly turned and walked away towards the creek. It stopped at the edge of the trees about thirty metres away and on some impulse, he stood and waved to it. Much to his surprise, the wolf stood still for a moment, then waved back. Without any further ado, it turned and disappeared into the trees, leaving him alone once again.

As he sat and slowly chewed his meal, he was really wondering whether he had just seen some wolflike creature that walked on two legs or if he was just having some weird hallucination brought on by fatigue and sleep deprivation. He had almost convinced himself that he was hallucinating until he found himself staring at a tin plate perched ever so delicately on top of a large snow covered stone roughly five metres away.

He put the frying pan down for a moment and made a wry face as he contemplated the undeniable fact that the past ten minutes had indeed actually occurred, and had not been some sort of dream or hallucination. He held his head in his hands and groaned. His life, whatever had become of it now, just got one hell of a lot more complex.

					—Chapter 5—

 Sleep did not come easily to the human, as weary as he was. In fact, it hardly came at all save for a few brief interludes laced with strange and disturbing dreams that did nothing to ease the confusion that ran rampant through his mind. It was still early and a faint twilight glow still lingered behind the mountains when he had crawled into his sleeping bag in a futile attempt to get some much needed rest. He had tossed and turned for what seemed like hours while the events of the past five days played through his mind in an endless loop, a sense of uneasiness leaching into his thoughts. There were so many things that he couldn’t explain and so many questions that he needed answered.

For interminable hours he stared up at the pine branches over his head, eyes glistening in the firelight. Bizarre images spawned in the half-awareness between awake and asleep jumped out at him from the unearthly patterns of light and shadow thrown against the roof by the flickering flames. A few times he managed to nod off to sleep, only to jerk awake a few short minutes later with his racing heart echoing heavily in his ears as if from the bottom of a well.

He was seriously beginning to think that he was going crazy.

Ever since his encounter with the wolflike creature that had come to his camp, a terrible sense of wrongness had been growing in him. It shifted through his veins, creeping, gnawing at him until fear and uncertainty lurked in the dark places beneath the overhanging roof of pine boughs. It drove him from the dubious comfort of the lean-to and out into the cold, still air of an October night.

Through the remaining hours of the night, the watchful eyes of the heavens gazed unblinkingly down on him as he built the fire up high, seeking to drive back the night and purge the fears that plagued his mind. Green spruce logs crackled and hissed in the fire and the dancing flames made the nearby trees appear to flicker in and out of existence from the encircling night.

He paced back and forth in front of the fire like a caged animal, trampling the coarse snow down into hard pack. His head was down and his brow was furrowed with lines of intense concentration. Back and forth, back and forth he paced, heavy boots crunching on the hard frozen crust of the snow.

He paused his restless pacing for a moment and looked up into a midnight black sky studded with innumerable stars and painted with the bluish green curtains of the ever-changing and shifting Aurora Borealis. Surely the night must nearly be over he thought, but he had lost track of the time. The night hours are long when troubled thoughts weigh heavily on one's mind and sleep is far from one's grasp. The Milky Way arched overhead, a bright swath of eons old starlight that bisected the night sky. His eyes searched among the glittering stars, seeking among them the familiar patterns of the constellations he knew so well, and they failed to find them.

A gnawing dread took hold deep inside his guts as his eyes frantically searched the heavens. Orion, the hunter, should have been low in the southern sky at this hour. Instead of the unmistakable three bright stars in a row pattern of the hunter's belt, there was nothing but a random smattering of bright and faint stars. Not a single recognizable constellation revealed itself among the myriad specks of light that punctuated the curtain of night.

Just my luck, he thought ruefully. Even the stars were alien.

He continued to stare upward as his brain feverishly attempted calculations of time vs. stellar drift and the distances involved in relocating his person far enough away to make the sky appear different. He knew that there were tens of thousands of years involved in the one option and tens of light years in the other but it made sense somehow, a tiny piece of the puzzle slowly sliding into place. A growing sense of desperation wormed into his mind as he turned away, his jaw clenched and his mouth pressed into a grim line. The strange just kept getting stranger.

With nothing better to do, he sat down on a log at the mouth of his shelter and pulled his sleeping bag around his shoulders to keep the chill night air at bay. Conflicting feelings of confusion, fear, and anger banded together and made it feel as if he were spiralling down a dark tunnel towards something unknown, watching as his life receded away from his outstretched fingers. It was with sickening realization that he began to understand a kernel of the truth. Almost everything that he knew had been wrenched from his grasp and cast into oblivion. A long sigh escaped his lips and he slumped forwards to cast another piece of wood into the fire. He really hoped that the light at the end of the tunnel, when it finally decided to show itself, wouldn't end up being a train.

He was beginning to suspect that everything that had happened to him over the past six days was part of something bigger. Getting lost was one thing but disappearing trucks, picnic tables and civilizations were not usually part of the experience and neither were wolves that walked on two legs. Civilization was always somewhere out there and it was usually just a matter of time before it revealed itself in one way or another. That was not the case this time. So far, he hadn't seen a single damned sign of anything that would tell him that he wasn't the only human in these parts. He tiredly shook his head and tried to bring some sense of order to his thoughts. Maybe he was just being paranoid, but his whole situation seemed a little too well planned to be just a random sequence of events.

For one thing, he figured that the odds of him being randomly relocated in the unnatural manner that he had been were somewhere in the neighbourhood of several hundred trillion to one, and that the odds of something like that wolf existing weren't a whole lot less than that. Those facts alone were enough to make him carefully reconsider the events of the past six days. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed as if he had been picked out of the campground by someone or something, transported to parts unknown and left to fend for himself. To what end, he couldn't even begin to imagine.

He shifted uncomfortably on the log and leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. He propped up his chin on his hands and stared blankly into the fire. He still couldn't quite believe everything that had happened to him. What was supposed to have been a three day hunting trip had turned into something else entirely, an episode that was so far from believable that he wasn't sure if it was completely real, and it was really getting on his nerves. This world, or wherever he was now, looked real, sounded real, even smelt and tasted real but it just felt so undeniably wrong, wrong enough that he suspected it was permanent.

He sighed heavily and stared deep into the fire. Lost in thought, he was mesmerized by the subtly shifting patterns in the glowing embers. Time slowed to a halt. Seconds melted down, pooling to become minutes and then a most disconcerting thing happened.

A shadow passed between himself and the fire like a hand in front of his eyes. The world around him shifted, distorted, and faded away in a kaleidoscope of sound and light.

And he was somewhere else.

Not again!? His mind questioned crazily as he looked around him.

The fire and the campsite had disappeared only to be replaced with a desolate wasteland of smashed rock where the only colour that existed was a lifeless grey. No stars marked the twilight sky above him and not a single creature except himself moved about on the barren land.

Gripped in the throes of a powerful dream, he began walking. He had no real direction in mind but he was driven forwards by a sense of anticipation. Something important was about to happen.

The sky grew lighter with the approaching sunrise and the first hints of colour sprang to life in his drab surroundings. The fields of shattered stone gave way to softer earth and grass began to sprout up from the ground beneath his feet, the landscape shifting smoothly into a panorama of undulating hills. He saw a river in the distance, a thin ribbon of deepening blue that twisted its way to and fro among the grassy hills. He turned and approached the river and stood waiting on the bank, a lump in his throat as the rising sun cast the first rays of light across the land.

In the blink of an eye, everything changed again. The breath of light brought life and colour to a land once devoid of anything but grey. Before his very eyes, seedlings sprouted up from the ground. In the space of barely a minute, they grew into towering trees, matured and eventually withered and died. The trees fell to the ground only to be replaced by more sprouting up like weeds as the old ones decayed into the earth. A few small round shelters seemingly materialized out of thin air on the opposite bank of the river. He stared at them curiously for a moment before he understood. Framed with the ribs of long extinct mammoths and sheltered with the hides of animals, they were the homes of ancient humans. But why was he seeing them?

The sun continued to rise at an accelerated rate and his surroundings changed and evolved like he was watching some great time lapse movie.

The shelters across the river moved and shifted, collapsing into decay as new ones jumped up in the spaces between the rotting piles that slowly sank out of sight into the earth. Subtle changes appeared as the sun kept rising. The shelters of mammoth bone gave way to leather clad teepees, and still the trees and grass grew, lived, and died, the cycle of life shown at high speed. The teepees gradually faded into ruin and a few solitary houses built from logs rose up from the earth, their construction taking mere seconds.

And still the sun climbed higher into the sky.

The isolated log structures were reclaimed by the land and a cluster of old false-fronted wood buildings built themselves along the bank of the river. In short minutes he himself was surrounded by the growing town. Buildings were torn down before his eyes and new ones rose up from the wreckage. The architecture changed slowly, evolving. Buildings of brick and stone replaced those constructed from wood. Taller and taller they rose. Three stories, four, and higher yet. Steel and concrete replaced brick and stone, a small town exploding soundlessly out past him, reaching out towards the hills as it grew into a dense city.

He stood in the middle of an empty street, watching in fascination as two huge buildings rose up on either side of him, each level being stacked on top of the previous one at an impossible rate. The towers of steel transformed into pillars of golden hued glass that reached up to scrape the belly of the blue sky just as the sun passed directly overhead. As the sun began its descent towards the western horizon, the rate of change in the city slowed down. Old structures were still torn down and new buildings still rose up but they were not as elaborate as before. Stone and brick reappeared, and the new buildings were always shorter than the previous ones. The city shrank; the suburbs swallowed up by a constantly changing forest. As the sun descended to a mid afternoon level, construction ground to an eventual halt.

The sun sank steadily towards the horizon and the city was still and quiet. The ravages of time soon took their toll on the city around him. Concrete walls crumbled away, leaving their steel skeletons exposed to rust in the still air. Buildings collapsed all around and trees took root amongst the piles of forgotten stone.

And still the sun sank ever lower in the sky and the light faded away before the returning night. Nature invaded the city, creeping in on silent feet to cover the fallen stones with moss and lichen, to rust away the steel beams that lay strewn about like the bones of giants. Within minutes, all was covered with a thickening layer of earth from which new life sprouted. A forest shot up from the dirt that covered the bones of a city.

As the sun went down and the light disappeared under the onrushing darkness, there was nothing left of the city save for a few mounds of earth and some weathered, lichen encrusted stones. Time and nature had won the battle.

At the end, he was left much as he was at the beginning. Alone in a monochromatic world of grey, but this time he was left with something else. A terrifying seed of understanding had been planted deep within his mind.

The message had been heavily veiled but he believed that he understood its meaning. There could be no return to the life he knew so well. It didn't exist anymore.

"No!" He muttered through clenched teeth, balling his hands into fists. "It can't all be gone!"

"NOOOOOO....!" He screamed as he raised his arms in the air, trying to ward away the darkness that rushed in from all sides. His cry of despair was cut off as the darkness swallowed him up.

 

********************

 

Kendri walked down the narrow trail with a spring in her step and her tail wagging happily behind her. For the first time in what felt like years, she was happy. At least she thought she was happy, she wasn't completely sure though. Over the last half an hour her emotions had run the gamut from the initial bout of gut wrenching fear all the way to exhilaration. Happy? Maybe. Numb between the ears was a little closer to the truth. Even so, she still felt better now than she had at any time in recent memory.

With a little luck, and a lot of work, perhaps everything might turn out in the end after all. Her meeting with the stranger had turned out far better than she had expected. Granted, there had been a few tense moments right after the stranger had spotted her, but she had expected that. The amazing thing was that she never sensed any animosity from him, just wariness with a hint of fear around the edges. He had grabbed his weapon but instead of brandishing it threateningly as she had expected him to do, he had simply held it at the ready in a defensive posture and waited for her to make the next move. What she did next was not even something that she had expected herself to do. Now that she looked back on it, it had been one of the toughest decisions she had ever made to put aside her spear and step forward completely unarmed before a creature that had the power to snuff out her life before she would be able to do anything about it. How her heart had soared when he mimicked her actions and put his weapon aside! She smiled happily and felt the warm glow of contentment spread through her body. Perhaps the dreams were true after all.

The most amazing thing about her meeting with the creature was the simple fact that he had even gone far enough to share some of his meal with her. She still couldn't quite believe that. Among her people, it took a huge amount of trust for one to share their meal with a complete stranger. It was an instinct that traced its roots far back into the forgotten past of her people. Strangers were competition and competition was not welcome at the kill. Of course she realized that it might not have the same significance to the stranger, but nonetheless it was a gesture that had two important side effects. First, her fear of the creature had melted away to become something that floated between wariness and curiosity. Second, by all of the traditions of her people, she now owed him a small debt. Nothing major, something along the lines of a small gift. Preparing a meal for the person in question was the usually accepted manner of repaying such a debt but there were a host of other possibilities as well.

After stifling a yawn with the back of a paw, she looked up at the darkening sky through the canopy of branches above her head. It was getting a bit late and after all of the excitement this evening, she didn't particularly feel like continuing the long hike back to the cabin. It wasn't going to be a particularly cold night she thought, so she might as well find somewhere comfortable among the trees and sleep until morning. It didn't take her long to locate just such a place. She found it in the form of a huge uprooted spruce tree. She followed it along the length of its trunk, sniffing carefully. It had not been long since the tree had toppled over and most of the branches were still full with green needles. As she walked along, she pulled aside branches here and there, looking for that perfect spot. When she finally found it, she crawled under the cover of the branches and up to the rough bark of the trunk, which was as big around as her waist. Safe within her cocoon under the resinous branches, she shucked of her leather cloak and spread it out over the snow covered moss beneath her paws. After she placed her spear and short knife within easy reach, she crawled onto her cloak and after turning around three or four times, she curled up nose to tail. She shifted uncomfortably for a bit and her head snapped up. She growled something under her breath and rooted around underneath her cloak with a questioning paw. She grasped the offending stick which had been poking her in the side and tossed it out into the dark. She settled down again and after shifting around a bit to make sure there were no other annoyances waiting under her cloak, she began drifting down the short road to oblivion.

Kendri's slumber was not the usual near comatose state entered by those looking to get a decent night's rest. Such an unwary state could be dangerous when out in the forest. Over the past two years she had trained herself to sleep lightly whenever she was outside the confines of the cabin. To an outside observer she may have appeared to be deep in dreamland, but the fact that her pointed ears were sticking up, listening, twitching as they followed the night time sounds of the forest gave a clue that there was part of her that never slept. Ever vigilant, her mind walked in that grey area between the waking world and the dream world, keeping a wary ear cocked for anything that might pose a threat.

The night passed without incident, at least for her anyways.

When the sun finally climbed above the horizon behind a thin veil of high cloud and the feeble morning light crawled its way through the trees, it found Kendri sitting on a log trying to rid her fur of all the pine needles that had worked their way into her coat during the night. How she hated those things! She growled and muttered to herself as she tried in vain to pick the offending needles from her fur with her blunt claws. After several minutes of unsuccessful attempts at grooming, she let out a heavy sigh, stood up, fluffed out her fur and let loose a vigorous dog-like shake. Pine needles went flying everywhere, bouncing off of nearby trees and bushes with a sound like someone throwing sand across a wood floor. Grumbling a bit to herself and wishing for the millionth time that she had a decent brush, she smoothed down her coat as best as she could. She had disposed of most of the pine needles with the shaking but she could still feel a few here and there, making her itch and scratch where they poked at her skin. A bit of a wry grin grew across her muzzle as she remembered the last time this sort of thing happened. On that particular occasion, she had got stuck out in the forest in the middle of a ferocious downpour and had been forced to take shelter under the overhanging branches of a spruce tree. Not only had she been inundated with sticky and itchy pine needles that time, she had also been drenched clear through to her skin. She had returned to the cabin in a rather foul mood and as a rather bedraggled mess. She smiled and chuckled a bit. It had taken days to get her coat straightened out after that. Still smiling, she gathered up her cloak, shook it to rid it of clinging snow and more of those bothersome pine needles and threw it over her head. She affixed her belt and her short bladed knife around her waist and then gathered up her spear. She scrutinized the point of her spear with a critical eye for a moment before flicking a blunt claw over the edge of the blade. Satisfied that it was sharp enough, she set out in search of her morning meal.

As she stalked through the trees in search of prey, her mind wandered back over yesterday's unbelievable events. In her mind's eye, she could still see the stranger's face. For the first time, she had been able to look at him closely without a haze of fear obscuring small details, and she was intrigued by what she saw. The unruly mop of fur that covered the top of his head was a rich, patternless brown. She was fascinated by the way it ended a distance above his eyes, how it grew down the back of his head and faded into bare skin as it crawled down his neck. There was a confusing hint of copper tinted fur that grew around his mouth, down his neck and crawled up his cheeks to join with the brown mass on his head. Two of the strangest strips of dark brown, nearly black fur lined the heavy brow ridges above his eyes and seemed to move as if they had lives of their own. Then there were his eyes. Those eyes captivated her. Pale blue eyes, like those of a young pup, but with a tinge of steel grey that reminded her of the reflection of the blue sky off the calm surface of a deep lake. She shook her head, trying to push away the feeling that those eyes gave her. She knew it was impossible, but there was something about those eyes that triggered a fleeting sense of familiarity deep in the recesses of her mind when she looked into their pale depths. She was at a loss to explain it but she thought it might be tied in with the dreams somehow. Or perhaps as was more likely, she was just imagining it. Among her people, prolonged isolation from any type of social contact was known to have strange effects on the mind. For two very long years she had only herself to keep her company, so it wasn't all that surprising to her that she might have lost a bit of her sanity somewhere along the way.

She stopped suddenly, searching for the subtle movement in the nearby bushes that had grabbed her attention. She stood as still as a statue, ears pricked and her nose twitching. After a moment, something brown moved near ground level amongst the patchwork of twigs and the background of snow perhaps twenty-five or thirty spans away. The wind wasn't particularly in her favour so she crept noiselessly around in a wide arc, trying to get scent on whatever it was that lurked among the leafless branches ahead. A wolfish grin split her muzzle as she finally located the scent trail. Grouse! She ran her long tongue over her teeth. Just what she needed! Two or three of those would make a filling meal for both her and the stranger, and she would be able to repay the small debt she owed. She sniffed the air and grinned again. Grouse were medium sized birds, but were relatively stupid and easy enough to catch, not to mention tasty as well. She put her spear aside and eased off her cloak. Grouse may be stupid, but they are wary. Her leather cloak was good at keeping her fur dry and relatively clean but it would be a hindrance in a case like this. Stalking through thick bush like this was a lot easier without the added encumbrance of clothing. She carefully folded up her cloak and lay it on the snow next to her spear. She reached for her knife and her paw hovered uncertainly above it. After a moments thought, she put it and the belt on top of her cloak. The only things she would need for this hunt were her bare paws. She crouched down low to the ground, looking more like her four legged cousins than she would have believed, and began her stalk.

Kendri blended in exceptionally well with the background of tree trunks and low bushes. So did the grouse. It took a keen eye to be able to pick out any of the players in this drama as they moved towards their fateful meeting. One moved with extreme care and patience, the other two tottered around in blissful ignorance as they picked through the underbrush. Their soft chirping noises were barely audible as they moved about in search of seeds and other edibles. Her amber eyes fixed dead ahead and her ears standing at attention, Kendri moved with almost infinite slowness. The gap between her and her prey was narrowed by a paw's breadth at a time. Five spans, four, a minute long pause at three spans as one of the birds cast a wary eye in her direction. She waited, gathering her legs underneath her for the final spring, every muscle taut with anticipation. The grouse came closer yet, two spans, one and a half, and Kendri launched herself out of hiding. There was a startled whirring of wings as the grouse exploded out from under her lunging form.

Only one made it to the safety of the high branches of a nearby tree.

The other one dangled limply from Kendri's right paw. It had been too late in its attempt to flee and she had caught it in her outstretched paws and given its neck a quick twist. Panting happily from the excitement and the exertion, she made her way back where she had placed her cloak, spear and knife. She put her cloak back on, gathered up her possessions and went in search of another grouse or two.

A couple of hours later, she'd managed to catch another grouse and had narrowly missed bagging a third one. She hoped that two birds should make enough of a meal for her and the stranger. She was quite thoroughly hungry and was getting tired of hunting. It was time to return to the creature's camp and repay her debt by sharing her breakfast with him.

Now if only she could figure out where that was...

It took her perhaps another hour to retrace her steps to where she had spent the night, and there she paused for a long while. The trail stretched out before her, winding it's way through the dense trees. As she stood there, a battle raged within her. Despite everything that had transpired, she began to second guess her decision to return to the stranger's camp. She looked longingly down the path she knew would take her home. It would be all too easy to take that long, lonely trail back to the cabin. There was fear in her thoughts, underlying all else like a cold pool of water. It was a fear of change, but also a fear of things staying the same. Her ears and tail sagged and she leaned despondently against a tree. The happiness that had been her unfamiliar companion through the morning was suddenly drowned in a flood of uncertainty. To take the worn path back to the cabin meant a return to the life that had plagued her for the last two years. She wasn't particularly thrilled with that life, but it was hers. It was familiar, predictable and for some reason that seemed a little strange to her, it was comfortable. To take the path less travelled, so to speak, would be to start anew and she wasn't sure if she could handle that. It was one of the most difficult decisions she had ever faced. She leaned against the tree for a moment longer, watching the shadows of the forest move back and forth over the snow as the wind toyed with the tall trees. She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, eyes fixed on the trail before her. She took a hesitant step forward, then another, and another. Soon she was striding purposefully in the direction of the stranger's camp. The decision had been made. For better or for worse, she would seek out her future down the uncertain path.

Two years was far too long of a time to be alone. 

					—Chapter 6—

Heavy grey clouds rolled silently in from over the mountains to the west and slowly drained away the strength of the midday sun. An uneasy calm settled over the land as the clouds descended to sit right on the tips of the towering trees themselves. The silence that gripped the forest as it waited under the shadow of the storm was like a physical presence. Kendri hated it. She shook her head and clenched her teeth, casting uneasy glances at the surrounding trees as she walked down the narrow trail. The StormWalker prowled the woods at times like this, unseen, unheard, but always sensed on some instinctual level as it carried a warning to the creatures of the forest. By the sounds of things, or rather the lack of sounds, the forest that surrounded her understood the message loud and clear and was hunkering down to endure yet another blast of winter. Even Kendri’s own instincts cried out for her to seek out some sheltered corner among the trees and curl up into a ball to conserve warmth and energy and wait until the storm passed through. She couldn't do that, not yet anyhow. The two grouse that dangled by their necks from her left paw were a constant reminder of the task that lay ahead.

Kendri stopped for a moment and was mesmerized by the pale disc of the sun as it fought a losing battle against dense tendrils of attacking cloud. A solitary flake of snow drifted down from the ominous sky and settled on her muzzle. She stared at it, cross-eyed and watched as it melted into a drop of water that sat perched on the very tips of the short fur just behind her nose. She shook it off and growled, brushing at her muzzle with the back of a paw. From the look and feel of things, there was going to be snow in plenty. That meant in all likelihood, she was going to get wet. And if there was one thing that Kendri truly despised, it was getting wet. It took forever to get her fur straightened out afterwards, especially considering that the only means she had to groom her self were her own claws. She slouched through the trees, grumbling to herself about the weather in general and water in her fur in particular. She continued growling and grumbling to herself the whole way to the stranger's camp. Her plans of making a meal for the stranger and herself looked as if they were going to get smothered under a blanket of snow. It figured, she thought. Trust the weather to turn a relatively simple task into a disaster. However, there was shelter at the stranger's camp and a fire too. Perhaps he would permit her to share the warmth of his fire and of his shelter until the storm blew past. Maybe, but maybe not. Just as likely he would chase her away after the meal. Or worse, he could attack her and take the food for his own. She shuddered at the thought. She doubted that she would have much of a chance against him should he try that course of action. Perhaps she would be able to outrun the stranger but there was always that weapon of his. She knew she wouldn't be able to outrun its deadly effects.

She sighed and mentally berated herself for thinking such unworthy thoughts. After all, it had been the stranger who had made that first unlikely move and offered her a share of his meal yesterday. Would she have done the same thing if their positions had been reversed? Perhaps, but she wasn’t entirely sure. Come to think of it, there wasn't much that she was sure of anymore. Too many strange things that had happened since the creature had showed up. The only things she was sure of now were that there was going to be snow in the foreseeable future, and that she had to somehow convince a total stranger to let her prepare him a meal, and then hopefully he would let her endure the storm beneath the dubious shelter of the pine branch roof of his makeshift shack.

The creek was near at hand and its gentle gurgling guided Kendri to its bank. The trees thinned out a bit on the opposite side and she briefly caught a faint whiff of wood smoke as the wind swirled around her. It was not far now. She walked along the bank of the creek, following the scent trail and keeping an eye out for a good spot to cross the icy waters. Here and there, a solitary flake of snow spiralled down from the heavy clouds and in the distance and the impassive grey wall of mountains disappeared behind a haze of oncoming snow. The wind picked up, swirling through the trees, cold, and biting deep with the fangs of winter. Kendri located a narrowing of the ice-encrusted waters and with a graceful leap, she easily cleared the stream and was safe on the other side.

Kendri knew the way from here quite well by now. After her first meeting with the stranger it had been indelibly etched in her mind. She was unnaturally calm as she approached the stranger's camp from the upwind side. Perhaps she was thinking too far ahead, but it seemed that the future, her future and maybe even the stranger's would be decided within the next few hours. She felt drawn towards this meeting by forces beyond her control. It seemed that Fate held her firmly within its grasp and propelled her down an uncertain path and to an unknown end.

As Kendri rounded a bend in the trail and stepped out from the lee of a boulder, her heart began racing. She was fighting a losing battle to keep her ears erect as she made the final approach. Snow began to descend in heavy flakes as the outstretched fingers of the storm reached out over the valley.

The camp was deserted. Kendri sighed and leaned heavily on her spear, shaking her head in disbelief. Were the Gods playing some cruel trick on her? She eyed the sky accusingly for a moment before turning her eyes back to the empty camp. Perhaps the creature had fled when he scented her coming towards his camp. Whatever the cause, he was nowhere to be seen. Even the fire, which he took great pains to keep burning, was nearly extinguished. Only the tiniest wisp of smoke rose from the black pit of ashes to be lost among the swirling snowflakes.

Something wasn't right. Kendri didn't know what, but a sense of foreboding filled her as she crept into the midst of the camp to stand near the fire. She sniffed the air for a moment and then barked out a cautious greeting. The falling snow muffled the sound of her call. Her tail wagged a few times in hopeful anticipation of a reply but stilled as nothing but the subliminal hiss of descending snow reached her ears. Fear rose within, fear that maybe walking boldly in from the upwind side hadn't been such a good idea after all. The stranger would have scented her coming and had ample time to prepare an attack. Even now he could be crouching behind a boulder or a tree, training his deadly weapon upon her, waiting for just the right moment to strike...

No! Not that, it couldn't be that! She would have known if he would try something like that. Or would she? The dark clouds seemed to descend a little further, and the snow seemed to grow thicker. The stranger was an unknown. She couldn't expect him to react as one of her kind would.

Kendri dropped the two grouse beside what was left of the fire and then grasped her spear in both paws. She raised it high above her head and held it there for a brief moment before bending over and placing it beside the two grouse. She stepped back a few paces and held her arms wide, turning in a slow circle, her eyes scanning the snow and trees. Perhaps if the stranger was lurking out there somewhere, he would understand by her actions that she was not a threat to him. It had worked once before.

Once again, nothing but the eerie silence that only a heavy snowfall can create reached her ears. The fear that had welled up moments earlier lessened and she moved over to crouch in front of the stranger's shelter. In front of her, lying amid the trampled snow as if it had been hurriedly cast away, was a bundle of dark green cloth. She picked it up and held it at arm's length. It was thick, heavy, rectangular in shape and absolutely saturated with the stranger's scent. For a moment, she was at a loss as to what purpose it served, and then she recalled the stranger's disturbing lack of fur. The cloth was certainly large enough for one his size to wrap it about himself. It must be some sort of blanket or bedding material perhaps. She ran a paw over the material. The weaving of the cloth was incredibly fine and she wondered for a moment who would have had the skill and patience to make such a thing. She sniffed at it, trying to sort the overlapping traces of scent that leaked from it. Some of the scent was old and stale, but much of it was more recent, barely hours old. Concern and unease gripped her when she detected a faint hint of fear scent lingering on the cloth.

Had something happened to the stranger, something terrible enough to scare him away from the security and warmth of shelter and fire? Such a thing must be terrible indeed, for a storm like the one that was in the making was no thing to be caught out in. This was most perplexing. Kendri crept forward to the mouth of the shelter. With her ears flat and tail tucked and acutely aware that she was violating the stranger's territory, she entered the dark interior, her black nose working overtime. She tucked the pile of green cloth in a corner to keep it out of the snow. The creature's scent was strong here, but it was still hours old. As her eyes adjusted to the gloomy interior, she caught a glimpse of something that made her blood run cold. The stranger's weapon was there, exuding a silent menace from where it lay against the side of the shelter. She stared at it fixedly for a moment before backing slowly out of the shelter. She stood up slowly, her eyes never leaving the dark mouth of the shelter. Troubled thoughts raced through her mind while the snow drifted silently down around her.

During all of the long days that she had tracked this strange creature, there was not one single minute in all of that time had she seen him without that weapon within easy reach. Why would he have gone and left it behind? She licked her lips nervously and shook some of the snow from her fur. There may be a way to find out what had happened here, she thought, as long as that part of her was still alive. She clenched her paws into fists. Two years ago she'd buried that aspect of her being deep within a hard shell of protective forgetfulness. She'd sworn that she would never again allow it to surface for fear of the painful memories that would escape with it, but that was before she had found this creature. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, and her whole body sagged like a deflated balloon. She had little choice in the matter. If it would help her find the stranger and possibly save him from injury or death, she had to do it, regardless of the cost in old pain.

Kendri relaxed somewhat and tried to calm her nerves. After a moment of slow, deep breathing, she closed her eyes and concentrated hard, bringing up a picture of the creature in her mind‘s eye. All of her species were empathic to a degree, a holdover from their distant past before speech became the primary means of communication, and Kendri was more so than most of her kind. Usually close proximity to the source of the emotions was necessary for one to sense them, but that was not always the case. Such was Kendri's sensitivity that certain strong emotions, anger, fear, joy, sorrow, could be sensed from a distance, maybe fifty spans at most. If those feelings were intense enough, intense to the point where the emotions took over conscious thoughts, there was the possibility that she might be able to sense the faint emotional echo that lingered even hours after the person had departed. She was uncertain whether it would work with the stranger but she had to try. Her instincts were telling her that he was in some kind of trouble, and time was short. She stood still as a statue, eyes closed, mind searching...

Snow continued to spiral down in silent accumulation, the flakes gathering on her head and shoulders. Held away from the warmth of her body by her thick fur coat and long black tipped guard hairs, the snow did not melt, but instead collected in an ever-thickening layer as she stood motionless.

After a few moments, an ear twitched. Her hackles lifted, revealing a glimpse of her sharp teeth. Kendri jerked convulsively. A flash, like that of lightning, arced across her thoughts, leaving a blurry after image that slowly faded away. Her eyes snapped open and she shivered uncontrollably, but not from the snow or the cold. Fear. There was so much fear around her; it blanketed the camp like thick fog. The stranger had been terrified of something, and had fled. The lingering traces of fear pointed a clear arrow in the direction of his rapid departure.

After a brief moment of searching, she found a trail that led away from his camp. Many times the stranger’s large feet had travelled it and it took all of Kendri’s tracking skills to pick out the hurried footprints that lay among the jumble of prints.. They headed straight downwind. A foolish thing to do, she thought. It was far too easy to run into danger with the wind at your back. The invaluable warnings carried on the breeze would be useless, but the creature would not have been thinking rationally. The fear would have possessed him and he would have been running blindly away from whatever it was that had frightened him so.

She had to go after him. At the rate the snow was falling, it wouldn't be long before his trail would be obliterated and she wasn’t sure how long she would be able to follow the lingering trail of fear that he had left behind him. If stranger wasn't lost already, he soon would be and Kendri didn't know if he would be able to survive the storm on his own, away from his fire and shelter. Her mind made up, she paused only briefly to breathe life back into the nearly extinguished fire. Once it was burning steadily, she threw an armload of wood on it from the pile that was near at hand. She stooped to pick up her spear and brushed a few pawfuls of snow over the grouse that she had brought with her. The meal would have to wait.

It was not without some trepidation that she took up the trail that led away from the camp and into the trees. Once more she was heading towards the unknown, a fact that was all too clear as she looked at the prints that marked the snow. The stranger had been running with giant strides, haphazardly jumping over deadfalls and swerving through the trees. Kendri followed as quickly as she was able.

Trees creaked and groaned as the wind suddenly picked up and the steady onslaught of snow continued. Where the stranger had fled across a small clearing, fresh snow had drifted over the footprints and Kendri lost the trail altogether. She paused for a moment, concentrating, trying to detect the ghostlike remnants of the fear that accompanied the stranger’s trail. After a few worried moments spent searching, it was with intense relief that she located the trail once more. She fairly ran along it, pausing every few minutes or so to sniff the wind in hopes of catching scent of the stranger.

As she ran along the trail, memories long repressed wormed their way to the surface...

"...Remember this well Kendri. Every trail tells a story of the animal that made it, but you will have to look very carefully to read it..."

The voice was that of her father, and the memory was one from many years ago when she was a young pup and he was teaching her the ways of the hunt. She fought back the sadness that threatened to overwhelm her. The memory flowed on, unchecked.

"...See these deer tracks here in the snow? Follow that trail for a while and you will begin to see how that animal lives. You will learn what they like to eat and where they find it, you will find the places they like to bed down, the places they drink. You will see how they move from place to place as the seasons change. You will learn what predators follow their trails as we do. You will see how a life comes to an end, yet still goes on. The deer will die, but in doing so it will provide others with the means to live..."

The memory faded and she stopped to lean against a tree for a moment to catch her breath. A pained expression crossed her face. She had been afraid of this. So much effort on her part had been put into keeping such memories forgotten but now the past was thrashing about just below the surface, fighting to be remembered whether she liked it or not and there was nothing she could do about it. She took a couple of deep breaths and forced her mind to stay on the task at hand. She began jogging down the trail again.

Remembering her father’s advice, Kendri read the story of the trail she was following. She could see by the tracks that the creature had been getting tired. The pace of the footprints slowed and they became clumsier. She found a large area of trampled snow where he had apparently tripped. She sniffed about the area for a moment before moving on. After recovering from his fall, the stranger had resumed his wild pace through the forest. She could still sense the fear that drove him as it drifted down the trail like a dark cloud. A premonition flickered at the edges of perception. A confused jumble of images flashed through her mind. The stranger fighting his way to his feet, only to collapse into the snow. Pain, hopelessness and fear. The creature dragging himself through the snow on all fours. Icy fingers slipped through her fur to send a shiver down her spine as the vision faded. Cold. So cold... She looked around helplessly, a new sense of urgency coming to the forefront. She took off down the trail as fast as her legs could carry her, praying that she wouldn't be too late.

Another memory broke through her barriers and flared to life with a vividness that nearly overwhelmed her.

...Early fall, at that glorious time of year when the heat of summer finally gives way to the welcome cool of autumn and the leaves on the trees turn from green to beautiful hues of gold, yellow and red. Kendri remembered this day all too clearly. It was the day before she was to come of age. She had gone to her favourite place to sit and think, a sheltered spot down by the river where a clump of poplar trees strung out along the bank provided welcome shade from the warmth of the sun. It had been an absolutely spectacular day, she recalled. The late morning sun glittered through the branches of the trees while around her the hills of golden grass gently swayed and waved under a light breeze. She sat back amongst the tall grass and thought about what was to happen in the days ahead. Soon she was to be initiated into adulthood, and the carefree days of her youth seemed to be coming to an end. Nevertheless, she had been excited at the prospect. Adulthood meant a mate, a family, and much more responsibility. A sad smile came to Kendri's muzzle as she recalled what had happened next. She had been so lost in her thoughts on the future that she had failed to notice a familiar figure sneaking up behind her. She had realized what was going on at the last second and barely had time to utter a startled yip as Rennik pounced on her. They rolled through the grass, a tangle of furry limbs, wagging tails and laughing faces, their mock growls and yips echoing among the hills until at last they came to a stop. One year older than she, Rennik was a tall, silver-grey male with warm brown eyes. He had been a close friend of hers as long as she could remember. He had made his intentions to become more than just a friend known to her that day. In a move that was so unlike the fun loving joker she knew him as, he had taken her in his arms and given her a tender lick on the cheek. In quiet words full of emotion, he had told her that if she would have him, he would ask her father if he could take her as his mate in two days time. She had grinned happily, given him a quick lick on the nose, and told him that she wanted none other than him...

A tear rolled down Kendri's cheek, clinging to her grey cheek fur. She brushed it away with a numb paw and stepped up her pace through the trees, seeking to distance herself from the memories that hounded her. That had been the happiest day in her life, but it was not to last. Rennik never got the chance to ask for her to be his mate. Two days later, he and everyone else in the pack were dead, victims of a surprise attack from their warlike enemies to the east. Kendri survived, but her life had been ripped to shreds that day. She had wandered aimlessly for days, numb, empty and desperately alone. When she had regained some of her senses and realized that the person she had been no longer existed, such was the depths of her despair that she fled her ancestral home on the prairies and headed ever westward, not caring where she went or what happened to her along the way. On some instinctual level, she tried to distance herself from the source of the pain in the hopes that she might eventually recover from it, but she never did. Hardly a day went by where she didn't wish that she had died with the rest of her packmates. She shook her head sadly and felt the tears threaten to start flowing anew. She struggled for a moment to control her emotions and nearly lost. Only by sheer force of will was she able to hold back the tears and keep the sadness at bay. Now was not the time for despair, there would time enough for that later. She plunged onward down the trail, forcing herself to think of nothing but finding the stranger.

It was perhaps three hundred spans later that she reached the spot where trouble began. At the crest of a hill, the stranger had tripped on a snow covered log and gone sprawling, tumbling several spans down the hill and coming to rest against a tree. She sniffed about the trampled snow. The creature had lain here for some time, either unconscious or resting. Her heart skipped a beat when she discovered a few red spots of blood seeping into the snow. He had been injured. Judging from the amount of blood left on the snow his injuries weren‘t serious but they were enough to slow him down. The trail that led away from there was quite fresh, barely an hour old and the quickly falling snow had only just begun to fill the hurried tracks. Kendri knew she was close. She found where the stranger had regained his feet and had made a few wobbly steps before collapsing again. Her heart sank when she saw that the trail after that has a laboured one. The stranger had been crawling on all fours and favouring one leg by the looks of the tracks in the snow. Kendri clenched her jaw, trying to fight back the worry that possessed her. She was close, but she could no longer sense the fear that had accompanied the trail. That probably meant that the creature was unconscious, or worse.

If Kendri had not been looking for the stranger, she would have walked right by him. As it was, she was barely able to make out his huge form where he lay huddled amongst the roots of an uprooted tree. A finger's breadth of snow covered him and he was completely and utterly motionless. Her ears wilted and she sighed heavily. Was she too late?

Kendri walked forward hesitantly, desperately wanting to help but unsure of what his reaction would be. She approached to within a couple of spans and called out to him, tail wagging hopefully behind her. There was no response. She approached closer yet and knelt down beside his inert form, looking closely for signs of life. He was breathing! An unbelievable wave of relief swept through her. He was alive, but unconscious. A spider's web of blood traced down the side of his face, dripping down from his chin to stain the snow with bright red droplets. Kendri sucked in a troubled breath. A head wound, that was not a good sign. If he had received a heavy blow to the head, he might be beyond any aid she could provide. For a brief moment she wondered what to do. She had to wake him up somehow. She knew that she would never be able to get him back to the safety of his camp all by herself. She reached out a tentative paw to his shoulder and gently shook him. A faint groan was her reply. Her ears perked up and her tail thumped against the snow behind her. Still, he remained motionless. She shook him again and got no response this time.

"Come on! Wake up!" She almost yelled. Still no response.

Worried, Kendri reached out and touched her fingers to the stranger's face. At the moment the pads of her fingers contacted the stranger’s bare skin a jolt, like an electric shock, crackled up her arm. Kendri jerked back, startled. A spark burned brightly in the back of her mind for a split second before dying away. The creature's eyes opened, stared unseeing towards her for a moment then closed again.

Kendri stared at the stranger with wide eyes. What had just happened? That was unlike anything she had experienced before. That jolt brought with it a fleeting sense of familiarity. A storm of emotions brewed up within her and memory jarred. Images and feelings she couldn't quite place flared up in her mind for the briefest of moments before fading into nothingness. She sat unmoving for a few short seconds, jaw hanging open and her ears back, completely stunned by what had just transpired. Then, without even realizing what she was doing, she reached out a trembling paw to the stranger's cheek once more. There was no jolt this time, only a faint tingling sensation that faded almost instantly. The stranger opened his eyes again and held her gaze for a second. This time there was recognition showing in those pale depths. Kendri hurriedly drew her arm back. The creature blinked a few times and groaned softly. He stirred feebly, one paw brushing at his bloodstained face.

The strange jolt forgotten for the moment, Kendri was at a loss as what to do next. She had to get the stranger back to the safety of his camp but she was unsure as to how exactly she would go about doing that. She sure wasn't going to be able to carry him, or even drag him for that matter. Would he even understand that she was trying to help him? The stranger stared back with unfocused eyes. His head lolled after a moment and his eyes closed.

"Hey! Try to stay awake!" She cried out in near panic. She was terrified that if he fell asleep again he might stay that way, permanently.

At the sound of her voice, the creature's eyes popped open and his head swung around. He stared at her, eyes wide. Some unrecognizable and vague expression flickered briefly across his pale features. She'd startled him, that was for sure, but she didn't sense much fear from him. She took that as a good sign.

"We must go find shelter, now." Kendri motioned with her paws down the trail behind her.

The stranger looked right through her with vacant eyes, his mouth working as if trying to speak. Kendri was getting worried. With the combination of the cold and his head wound, the stranger was clearly not fully aware of what was going on. She decided to try a different approach. When she spoke again, she spoke softly, gently, almost whispering.

"Can you hear me?" Those faded blue eyes focused on her for a moment and he murmured something unintelligible.

"I need you to stand up." For a tense moment there was no reaction.

"Come on!" There was a desperate edge in her voice.

Almost as if he understood her, he struggled to rise to his feet. Kendri stood with him and struggled to support his weight as best as she could. By the stars, he was heavy!

The stranger swayed heavily once he regained his feet. Kendri took a few deep breaths and began to gently guide him back down the trail. After only a couple of paces there was a cry of pain from the creature and he stumbled. Kendri tried her best to steady him but she was pulled to her knees in the snow as the stranger collapsed. He lay in the snow, moaning softly, his paws reaching for his left ankle. Kendri smacked the snow with a paw in frustration. How was she supposed to get such a huge creature back to safety if he couldn't even walk on his own?

"Get up! Do you hear me? Get up!" She tugged on his arm, trying to pull him to his feet. She may as well have been trying to move a mountain. The creature wouldn't budge. She pulled with every last ounce of her strength. The stranger stirred weakly and managed to force himself to a sitting position.

"That's it!" His progress was excruciatingly slow, but he at last managed to regain his feet. He stood unsteadily, and leaned heavily against a tree. He blinked unfocussed eyes at her and drew in deep shuddering breaths. Kendri sensed his confusion and also an underlying current of fear. She moved up to his left side and put one of his heavy arms over her shoulders. Perhaps with her supporting his left side she would be able to take enough weight off of his injured ankle to at least allow him to stagger. She put an arm around his back and gently steered him back down the trail.

The trip that followed was the stuff nightmares are made of, the type of thing that sends an involuntary shiver down the spine years later when some insignificant event suddenly triggers memories long repressed. It was a period of sustained effort, a battle against exhaustion and the storm, a struggle to regain the safety of fire and shelter at the stranger's camp.

Their progress was excruciatingly slow. Kendri soon found that she had not the strength to support the creature, and it seemed that every third or fourth step would send them both crashing to the snow. A vicious cycle soon emerged. The odd pair would stagger a few spans, the stranger towering over the diminutive form of Kendri like a giant. Then he'd stagger and fall to lie in the snow, blinking distant eyes up at the spinning snowflakes, groaning and mumbling softly. Kendri would yell at him, pull at him, yell some more, and plead with him. Finally, painfully, he would lever his bulk out of the snow and stagger another few steps before collapsing again.

It was not long before Kendri's throat was raw from all of the yelling she was doing, and she was panting up a storm. It dawned on her during a brief lull in the madness that she had used her voice more in the last half-hour than she had in the previous two years. She sat morosely in the snow, catching her breath. She wondered if the stranger understood a thing she had said so far. Not likely she told herself, the only thing she felt coming from him was a distant sense of confusion, which was a little unusual. Perhaps he had taken a heavier hit to the head than she had originally thought. Such an injury was not good news. She had seen cases before where people had died and all of the healing songs and prayers of the Elders and the Seers had been in vain. There were others she remembered as well. They had not died, but some part of them had been destroyed, an important part, and they were changed people afterwards. She hoped that would not happen to the stranger. Such a thing would be a fate worse than death. The stranger sat in the snow a couple of spans away, his back propped against the rough bark of a spruce tree. His head hung loosely, his chin against his chest. Kendri rose to her feet and walked to his side. She reached out and gently shook his shoulder.

"Time to go." She said, voice strained and haggard from her raw throat.

The stranger's head wobbled up and he swivelled glazed eyes towards her. He sighed and turned his eyes away. Kendri gently tugged at his arm. After a moment of stillness he began the painful and slow process of regaining his feet. Kendri's exhausted muscles cried out in pain and she staggered when the stranger leaned heavily against her. Only by dint of extreme effort did she manage to stay on her feet. She gathered what little strength she had left and stubbornly refused to give up. She had to keep going, there was no other way. To give up now would mean a slow death by hypothermia for the stranger. The clothing that he was wearing was soaked right through and she could feel the shivers that wracked his giant frame. She had to get him back to the life giving warmth of the fire at his camp. Onwards they stumbled, the creature hobbling on one good leg, clutching at trees and branches to steady himself.

All sense of time had been lost to Kendri. With the leaden skies and falling snow, it was an easy thing to lose track of. She didn't know how long she and the stranger had been struggling through the forest but it felt like an eternity before she caught the first hint of smoke from the fire at the camp borne on the wind. Her tail started wagging and she gave voice to an exhausted but excited yip. Almost there! The stranger looked at her, clueless as ever. She grinned at him and tried to step up the pace but the stranger was unable to manage it and he stumbled and fell with a cry of pain. He crawled on all fours for a span or two before he came up short and leaned against a convenient tree, breathing heavily. Her fatigue forgotten for the moment, Kendri gestured excitedly in the direction of the camp. "We're almost there!"

The stranger looked up at her, face deadpan, then slowly turned his head in the direction that she was pointing.

"Just over that ridge." She said, pointing up the trail that wound through the trees to the crest of a hill that was at most, fifty spans distant. "After that, maybe another two hundred spans and we're there. I don't know about you but after what we've been through, some food and rest would be nice." She smiled.

He turned back to her and those two strange strips of fur above his eyes drew together, and a vague expression flickered across his sharp features. Using the tree he was leaning against to his advantage, he pulled himself to his feet without any help from her this time. He stood unsteadily, balancing himself on his uninjured leg, one paw gripping the tree for balance. Kendri looked at him curiously. His eyes were less vacant now, and he seemed to be regaining some of his strength. A good sign, she thought. He hobbled forward a couple of steps on his own. Kendri quickly ran to catch up with him.

"Easy now, I don't want you to fall over and hurt yourself again." The stranger looked at her with what appeared to be a questioning glance and waited for her to catch up with him.

Going up the hill proved more difficult than Kendri thought. It was steeper than it had looked from the bottom. The struggle that ensued trying to climb the hill completely drained the strength that the two of them had left by the time they reached the top, necessitating another short stop to rest and recover what little strength was left after the exhausting trek through the snow. Kendri eyed the stranger curiously as he leaned against a tree. He returned her gaze, pale eyes searching, questioning. Once again, Kendri was struck with a distant sense of familiarity. There was something about this stranger that she had seen or felt before, but she couldn't put her finger on what it was. The moment was broken when the stranger looked up and appeared to sniff the air. He turned back to her with a large grin and fought his way to his feet. Kendri smelled it too, strong and pungent, smoke from the fire at the camp was carried on the back of the wind as it swirled through the trees around them.

"Not too far now." Kendri said with a grin. Her tail began to wag when the stranger returned her smile.

Even though it was a relatively short distance to the camp, it still took Kendri and the stranger the better part of half an hour to struggle over the last two hundred spans in their exhausted states. When at last the camp came into view, the stranger began to hobble forwards as fast as he could manage. Kendri did her best to keep up with him and keep him upright. He collapsed into the snow at the mouth of his shelter, breathing heavily. Home, at last.

The first thing Kendri did was to refuel the fire. Despite the armload of wood that she had thrown on it before leaving to search for the stranger, the fire had died down to a pile of black cinders from which only the faintest wisp of smoke rose. She stirred up the ashes with a stick and revealed a few dull red embers. She gently blew some life back into the embers and carefully added the smallest and driest pieces of wood that she could find while the stranger crawled on all fours into the shelter behind her. She cast a worried glance over her shoulder. He spread out the bundle of dark green cloth that Kendri had tucked into a corner earlier and sat down upon it, looking exhausted beyond words. Outside, the sky gradually grew darker as the evening wore on. The snow tapered off into flurries and the wind died down slightly. The fire was soon crackling and spitting as the wet wood finally caught and burned. The flickering orange light threw a welcome circle of warmth and light into the shelter.

The stranger began to take off his soaked clothing. First came the bulky coverings that he wore on his feet. The right one came off without much trouble but he paused for a moment before removing the left one. Kendri could see the muscles in his jaw move as he clenched his teeth, steeling himself against the pain that was sure to come. His face contorted in a hideous mask of pain and a small groan escaped him as he pulled on his injured foot. He tossed his footwear aside and gingerly massaged his ankle. After a moment he pulled off another covering that was over his foot, a thin one this time, and sucked in a sharp breath as the flickering firelight revealed the extent of his injury. His ankle was badly swollen and the skin was an ugly mottled blue. He tilted his head back, groaned, and uttered something that sounded suspiciously like a curse.

Kendri feared that his ankle might be broken, but she wasn't sure. There was only one way to find out, but she wasn't sure if the stranger would let her examine his ankle. She swallowed her uncertainty and decided to ask anyway.

"Would it be okay if I looked at that?" She asked, pointing at his injured limb and wagging her tail in a friendly manner. She tried to sound as friendly as possible. Perhaps if he didn't understand her, he might pick up the emotion in her voice. He stared at her evenly, his face completely devoid of any expressions. She slowly crept closer to him. He stiffened, and she sensed fear from him, echoed by the look in his eyes. She pointed at his ankle again, trying to indicate that she meant no harm. She reached out, very slowly and very gently, and placed a paw on his lower leg. He flinched but otherwise made no move. He stared at her with wide, frightened eyes and his fear drifted in the background like the ebb and flow of waves on a lakeshore.

For a brief moment Kendri marvelled at the sensation of bare skin beneath the pads of her fingers. She saw now that the creature was not totally without fur, he just had a lot less of it than she did. Sparse dark hairs covered his lower leg and thinned out down towards his foot. She moved her paws down to his ankle and probed here and there as gently as she possibly could. She heard the stranger's sharp intake of breath and felt the muscles in his leg go rigid. A soft cry escaped between his clenched teeth. Kendri swallowed nervously and tensed. If he wanted to strike at her, he had plenty of opportunity to do so.

The blows never came. Kendri examined the stranger's ankle as carefully and as quickly as she could. Much to her relief she could not find anything broken. She was pretty sure that he had just twisted it when he tripped and fell. As long as he stayed off of it, the injury would heal in a week or two. When she was done her examination, she gave him a smile and a gentle pat on the leg and turned back to the fire. The stranger followed her every movement with wary eyes for several minutes before he resumed taking off his soaked clothing. Kendri snuck a few glances at him as he did so, noting some differences in anatomy. She was momentarily fascinated by the way his muscles were so easily seen moving under his pale skin. She could not understand how wearing so many layers of clothing could be anything but uncomfortable. Even wearing just a leather cloak had a tendency to chafe and mess up her fur. She shook her head. She couldn't imagine living like that. She turned back to the fire. Behind her, the stranger wrapped himself up in his bundle of green cloth and was asleep sooner than Kendri thought possible.

Kendri yawned, her own fatigue suddenly remembered. She was hungry, but she didn't think that she had the energy necessary to make a meal tonight. The two grouse she had caught that lay under a paw's breadth of snow would still be there in the morning. There would be time enough then to make the meal that she owed to the strange creature asleep behind her. She yawned again, the last few hours catching up with her now that she was sitting down. She longed to lay down and get some sleep but she knew what would happen if she did. So many memories of her past had been dredged up over the last few hours. She knew that as soon as she lay down and closed her eyes, the nightmares would return. She sighed and stared out the mouth of the shelter at the silently falling snow. She had known that there would be a price to pay for awakening old feelings. She hoped that she was strong enough to bear the weight of what would come in the weeks ahead.

Before she curled up at the mouth of the shelter, Kendri threw another armload of wood on the fire and collected the stranger's wet clothing from where he had dropped it in a pile. She took a few minutes to carefully arrange it close to the fire so it would dry out instead of freezing to the ground. When that was taken care of, She curled up just inside the mouth of the shelter, and was asleep as soon as she closed her eyes.

The dreams that came to Kendri that night were not what she expected. She was spared the nightmares of darkness, pain and despair that normally ruled her sleep. Instead, she had a curious dream of the stranger. He stood alone on a barren, windswept hill under a sunless sky. Below him, stretched out on an open plain was what could only be a city of his own kind. Great towers of metal and glass reached up to touch the sky. Strange contraptions on wheels roared up and down the streets and a pall of haze and smoke rose above the great city. Thousands of the pale-skinned creatures swarmed on the streets, eyes downcast, hurrying to and fro with hardly a glance at their surroundings. The stranger turned to her, a deep pain showing in his pale eyes. He shook his head sadly and slowly turned and walked away from the city. He disappeared from sight into a forested mountain landscape that crawled up from the ground as he walked. Kendri turned to face the city. A million voices whispered in her mind, the voices of the city. Suddenly, they all cried out in despair as one and were eternally silent. The city crumbled to dust and was swept away by a great wind. She stood alone on the barren land, hearing the moaning voices of ancient despair whispering on the wind. Darkness slowly swallowed up the land, closing in on her from all sides...

Kendri snapped awake, the dream slipping away like sand between her fingers. She yawned and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. The fire had died down to a pile of coals that glowed a deep red and cast a feeble light against the walls of the shelter. She cocked her ears and listened in the darkness, concentrating for a moment on the deep, regular breathing of the sleeping stranger. She stood up and stretched briefly, then yawned again. She gathered up some more wood and carefully arranged it over the bed of glowing embers. She returned to her place by the fire and after turning in a circle a few times, as a dog would, she lay down and curled up. She blinked sleepily a few times. There was something that was nagging at her but she couldn't remember what it was. As she drifted back towards sleep, she realized that a strange word had lodged itself in her mind, an alien word that was not designed for a mouth like hers.

Human.

Just before she drifted away completely, Kendri realized that she knew what it meant.

The stranger, that's what he was. A human.

					—Chapter 7—

 The morning brought with it a fleeting memory of pain, and fear.

Faint grey light leaked in through the interwoven branches that made up the walls of the shelter. It was cold and damp. Frost whitened edges of the sleeping bag, and was slowly brought into focus as the human’s eyes adjusted to consciousness and the dismal greyishness of his surroundings. His breath hung in a cloud in front of his face for a moment before dissipating in the frosty air.

He blinked rapidly and stretched out, fingers and toes exploring the bubble of warmth contained within the confines of his sleeping bag. The groan that began deep in his throat turned into a sharp intake of breath as white-hot fire lanced unexpectedly through his left ankle. He was suddenly very still for a moment. His brow wrinkled.

There was something about that pain, something that seemed like it should be quite important. He couldn’t quite place it in his foggy, sleep-drugged mind. Vague memories dangled a hint in front of his face, a clue that was just out of his reach...

His eyes grew wide as memories of recent events trickled through his mind as slow as molasses. Fear ran cold fingers down his spine. That dream. But it hadn’t been a dream. He had actually been there. He’d had realistic dreams before, but none so real as to feel the ground beneath his feet, to feel the wind cool against his face. He rubbed his bleary eyes and sighed. Despair curled around him as he remembered what had been revealed in the dream. He lay still and silent for a long while, staring gloomily up at the roof of pine branches over his head.

There was nothing left, nothing at all. He understood that now. The life he knew so well, it was gone. So were his friends, his family, everyone and everything that he knew and loved. Only his memories of those precious things remained. Everything else was buried beneath the sands of time...

Other memories returned, drifting in like mist over the landscape. He vaguely recalled running, branches whipping and stinging at his face and hands as he fled from the darkness that had welled up in his dream. He squinted up into the gloom, a frown contorting his features as he tried to get a grip on the intangible feelings that were just out of his reach.... Cold... He remembered being so cold that his hands were as useless lumps of ice...

He sighed and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He carefully rolled on to his side, wincing as pain flashed through his ankle again. His eyes roved around the shelter, probing his dull surroundings for any clues as to what had happened during the night. There wasn’t much to be seen. The fire at the entrance was long dead. From what he could see of the outside world through the mouth of his shelter, it had snowed heavily during the night.

He yawned and shook his head. A headache flashed to life behind his eyes. A dismal groan escaped him, and he screwed his eyes tight shut.

After a moment, he cracked open a bloodshot eye and began the search for his clothes. It took him a moment to realize that he couldn’t see his clothes anywhere. He thought that was rather strange, but then again he was still having a tough time thinking straight. He pushed an arm out of the warmth of his sleeping bag and groped around blindly. His searching fingers eventually found one of his socks lying beside his sleeping bag. He picked it up and brought it in front of his face. It was frozen solid. He thumped it against the ground a couple of times. It made a hollow, almost wooden sound. He frowned and tossed the rock hard sock to the side. He was NOT getting out of his sleeping bag today at the rate things were going.

For several minutes, he lay quietly. He tried to fall back asleep, but he had too much on his mind to be able to relax. The pain in his ankle bubbled and flared whenever he moved, further adding to his worries. He tried counting the pine needles on the branches that were interlaced above him. After several minutes, he let out a long, drawn out sigh.

The scent of smoke wafted past his nose, and raised one of his eyebrows as it drifted past him into the depths of the shelter. His eyes moved over to the fire that was usually burning against the large stone that sat beside the mouth of his shelter. He stared hard at the cinder pile that lay there for a long time. Not even the tiniest wisp of smoke rose from the ashes.

His eyebrows drew together. He sniffed again. The scent of smoke was strong, pungent. He squinted at the entrance to his shelter, the brightness of the morning world outside momentarily hurting his eyes. After his eyes adjusted to the light, he was sure he saw smoke drift past the opening. He was suddenly at a loss to explain this. Why would there be a fire burning outside of his shelter? He sniffed again. This time he caught a faint whiff of something cooking. He pushed himself up on one elbow. What the heck was going on out there? He had barely finished that thought when a head darkened the entrance to his shelter.

It was a head that was not human. It was the head of a wolf. It grinned at him and licked its chops.

His yell of shock echoed out across the snow covered valley.

 

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Kendri flattened her ears and winced. Within the close confines of the shelter that yell had been loud. She gave the stranger an apologetic grin and pulled her head out of the shelter. She shook her head and blinked. Her ears were ringing.

Cautiously she peeked into the dark interior of the shelter once again. The pale creature was sitting bolt upright, staring at her with his eyes about ready to fall out of their sockets. Kendri noted with some amusement that the fur on top of his head stuck out at impossible angles. However, she thought, judging by the look on the stranger’s face, amusing was not what he thought of the current situation. His mouth hung open, small square white teeth barely visible behind pale lips. She could sense his fear seeping into the cold air. Kendri tried to smile at him in what she hoped was a friendly manner. She kept her ears back a bit, trying not to look like a threat. Her tail wagged a few times. The stranger abruptly shut his mouth and his head cocked to the side. He appeared to relax slightly. Maybe he recognized her? Kendri hoped so. He passed a paw over his face and looked around the shelter for a moment before his pale eyes returned to her. The fear that tainted the edges of her perception dwindled away to nothingness.

The stranger opened his mouth again, and this time he said something. Kendri’s ears came forward and she cocked her head to the side. The stranger’s voice was a deep rumble, almost felt more than heard. At first Kendri thought it was a growl, but she didn’t sense much fear or any aggression coming from the stranger. She soon realized that it was far more than a growl. Her sharp ears heard distinct modulated sounds. He had a language! She had suspected such a thing right from the first time she laid eyes on him, but some part of her had thought it impossible. Her heart soared at the possibilities that suddenly presented themselves. If he had a language, given time, they would be able learn how to communicate. The overpowering loneliness that had been her constant companion for the last two years suddenly seemed less frightening. A small smile crept along her muzzle.

The stranger spoke again. His words, such as they were, flowed together, the sentence he spoke becoming a rumbling whole. Kendri didn’t understand a word of it, but it felt like a question. The stranger’s pale eyes remained locked on hers. One corner of his mouth quirked upwards. Kendri wondered what it was that he wanted. She pulled her head back from the mouth of the shelter and thought hard for a moment, one paw scratching her chin. He could literally be asking her anything. She absent-mindedly picked up a stick that was close at paw and stirred up the fire in front of her. The two grouse that she had caught yesterday had been cleaned and plucked and were now skewered on sharpened sticks and had been carefully placed over precise locations of the fire in front of her. She reached down and turned the sticks so the birds would cook evenly. She yawned and looked up at the overcast sky. A few solitary snowflakes drifted down form the heavy clouds.

Also arranged on sticks stuck into strategic locations in the snow around the warmth of the fire were the stranger’s clothes. She pondered them for a moment. They were for the most part dried out by now. Perhaps that was what the stranger wanted. She could imagine the winter air being quite cold on bare skin. Well, she thought, it would be a good start to give him back his clothes, even if that wasn’t what he was asking for. She stood up, wincing slightly as her muscles complained about the ordeal she had put them through yesterday. One by one, she picked the unusual items of clothing from where they hung and gave them a vigorous shake. She bundled the items of clothing together and after taking a deep breath, she bent down and crawled into the shelter.
Kendri blinked rapidly as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. She heard movement as the stranger turned to face her. A hint of fear tickled her empathic perceptions. The stranger regarded her with wary eyes. His breathing was loud in the cramped quarters of the shelter. His scent was strong in here, so strong that is was almost overpowering. Pungent, salty, and carrying with it the tang of maleness. Kendri shifted uneasily and held out the bundle of clothing to the stranger. His eyes went towards the clothing held in her paws.

“Is this what you wanted?”

The stranger looked up sharply, pale eyes searching her face. The two thin strips of fur above his eyes drew together, and the bare skin on his forehead wrinkled. Did he sense the inflections in her voice as she had in his? Slowly he reached out pale, bare skinned paws, to gently take the clothing from her. The corners of his mouth curved upwards to crease his face in what might have been a smile. His head bobbed up and down once. Kendri smiled and wagged her tail. The stranger hurriedly picked through the bundle of clothes and picked out a grey piece, which he pulled over his head. It fit snugly over his torso, Kendri noted, conforming to the lines of his large frame as though it was a second skin. She wagged her tail at him and backed slowly out of the shelter. A bright spark burned in the stranger’s eyes and the corners of his mouth curved upwards again as she backed out. This time she felt sure that that was his way of smiling.

Kendri sat down in front of the fire again and checked on how the grouse were cooking. She couldn’t keep the smile from her face. Gods! It felt so good to be happy. It had been too long since she had felt this way. She had a sudden urge to run laughing through the fresh snow, rolling, playing like the pup that she once was.

A sudden flood of old memories welled up and the smile faded from Kendri’s face. She clenched her jaw and sighed. She reached to the pile of wood beside her and cast another ragged chunk of spruce on the fire. Why couldn’t the past just leave her alone?

Behind her, in the gloomy depths of the shelter, the human fought a painful battle to get his pants on over his swollen ankle.

 

----------------------------

 

The human ventured a peek at his abused ankle and really wished he hadn’t. When he caught a glimpse of the hideous shades of blue and black that his ankle had become, he drew in a sharp breath between clenched teeth and swore. This was not good. He explored the injured region with a gentle finger for a moment, tensing against the pain. After a brief examination, he was fairly sure that his ankle wasn’t broken, but he knew that at the very least it was badly sprained. Dread coiled in his stomach as he realized that even sprained, his ankle would take a few weeks to fully heal. He cursed again. He didn’t need this. He tried to deny it, but he knew with calm realization that an injury like this was almost a sentence of death in his current circumstances. With a heavy sigh, he lay back down for a moment, staring at the ceiling and contemplating his future. He had to admit that it looked rather bleak at the moment. He was stranded in the middle of nowhere with a badly sprained ankle. He would have to make do with the food that he had, since getting anymore would have to wait until he healed up enough to be able to walk with out much pain. However, and it took a while for the thought to percolate through his cluttered mind, he seemed to have found an unlikely friend. The wolfish creature had returned, and amazingly it appeared to want to help. He shook his head in dismay. Either that or the creature wanted him for its next meal. He paused for a moment as he recalled its recent actions. Had it really talked to him? He hadn’t understood a word of what it said, but what he had heard, or thought he had heard, was some kind of language. Funny thing was that he had asked it if it had seen his clothes and that’s exactly what the creature had brought him. He frowned and shook that thought away. Weird...

Gathering his courage, the human eyed the pile of clothes that the wolf had given to him. They were dry for the most part and the faintest bit of warmth still radiated from them, but they absolutely reeked of smoke. That puzzled him for a minute before he realized that the wolf must have placed them near the fire to dry them out. He shrugged and picked his sweater out of the pile and pulled it on over his shirt, shivering for a moment as the cold cloth stole away some of his precious body heat. As he straightened the sweater out, he saw what looked like traces of dried blood around the collar. He frowned, wondering where it had come from. Memory jarred and he jerked a hand up to his face. His probing fingers brushed the ragged edges of a scabbed over wound above his left eye near his hairline. He winced and pulled his hand away. In the dim light he could see flecks of dried blood sticking to his fingers. He contemplated the evidence of injury for a moment, unsure of what to think or do next. He grimaced and wiped his hand on his sleeping bag. No wonder he had a headache.

He dug through the rest of clothes in a pre-occupied manner. He could only find one of his socks until he remembered that the other one was frozen into a solid lump somewhere behind him. That shouldn’t be much of a problem, he thought. He was sure that trying to pull a sock over his sprained ankle would be an excruciating experience at best. His gloves were there in the pile, and he pulled them and the sock inside his sleeping bag to warm them up before he put them on. He picked up his jacket and pulled it on, wrinkling his nose at the overpowering scent of smoke that clung to it. There was dried blood on the collar of the jacket as well. He tried his best to brush it off. He took a deep breath and eyed his jeans where they lay next to him, wondering how best to put them on and keep the pain to a minimum. After a moment of hard thinking, he gritted his teeth and picked them up. This was going to hurt.

It did. He lay back, breathing heavily, sweat beading on his brow despite the cold. He took a moment to collect himself as the pain slowly faded away. Never once did he ever think that the simple act of getting dressed could cause so much pain. He groaned and pulled himself into a sitting position. Just how the hell was he supposed to do anything in this condition? Even walking wasn’t going to be an easy task. He would have to make himself some sort of crutch or something, and even then he would be able to do little more than stumble around.

He reached over and picked up one of his boots. This part, he figured, was going to be even less fun than putting his jeans on. He loosened the laces and stretched open the mouth of his boot as far as it would go. Gingerly he placed his injured foot into the boot and began to gently pull the stiff and cold piece of footwear on to his abused foot. The grinding of his teeth was audible within the close confines of the shelter. He continued to ease the boot on and a gasp of pain escaped from between his clenched teeth as he finally managed to get it all the way on. He bent forward, resting his forehead on his knee and waited for the pain to subside. Strangely, the cold that seeped into his bare ankle from the boot helped ease the pain slightly. After a moment of respite, he fished the sock out of his sleeping bag and pulled it over his other foot. He pulled on his other boot, laced it up and then lay back against his sleeping bag. He couldn’t believe it. He was worn out from the simple act of getting dressed. He felt like crawling back into his sleeping back and going back to sleep for a month, but he knew that doing so would get him nowhere.

As he sat there pondering what to do, another whiff of smoke drifted past him, carrying with it the tantalizing hit of a cooking meal. Hunger suddenly gnawed at his belly. Whatever it was that the wolf was cooking outside was making his mouth water and he wondered if it would share some of it with him. Actually he wondered about a lot more than that. He wondered what the wolf was even doing here and he wondered just exactly what it was. He wondered about wolf’s intentions, but mostly he wondered what kind of reaction he was going to get from it when he came crawling out of the shelter. He turned his head to stare at his rifle. He was rather surprised that it was still there. Either the wolf didn’t realize what it was, or it was a gesture of trust to leave it within his reach. He chewed his lower lip while digesting this new bit of information. Considering what had happened over the last couple of days, he was leaning towards the creature trusting him not to use the rifle against it. He recalled wolfish creature’s reaction during their first meeting when he had snatched up the gun. Its reaction had been one of fear, and his brow furrowed as that incident brought another question to his mind. How would it know what the rifle was and what it could do? Then he remembered the strange tracks that he had come across several days ago. The wolf could have been following him for nearly the whole time that he had been stranded here, and it may have seen him shoot the deer. That made sense, in a way. He sighed and put a hand to his head. Why couldn’t his life just be simple for once?

His stomach rumbled again, drawing to his attention the fact that there was some form of food cooking outside. He swallowed nervously and began to crawl out of the shelter on his hands and knees, being careful not to bump his ankle.

The change in lighting stung his eyes for a moment before they adjusted to the brightness of the outside world. The first thing he saw was that it had snowed heavily overnight, to the tune of about eight inches of the white stuff. He forced himself to his knees and looked around. It was a grey, overcast day and a few solitary flakes of snow drifted down from the clouds. Off to his right, sitting on a log next to a small fire was the wolf. It looked at him curiously and its tail waved side to side a couple of times. He struggled to his feet and leaned against the boulder that stood at the mouth of his shelter to take the weight off of his injured ankle. The wolf looked up at him with wariness in its amber eyes. He noted with some surprise that his cooler sat in the snow near the fire, opposite the wolf. He swallowed nervously and started towards it, the tantalizing hints of cooking meat driving him onwards, his hunger overcoming his uncertainty.

Breathing deeply, preparing himself for the stab of pain that was sure to come, the human eased his left foot forward and gently put some weight on it. He winced and lurched forward as pain lanced up his leg. He swore under his breath and balanced unsteadily on his good leg while he waited for the pain to subside. He was going to have to make some kind of crutch and soon too. He wasn’t going to make it very far without one. He stumbled forward another step, grinding his teeth as the pain flared again.

The wolf stood up slowly. Startled, the human stopped and stared at it. The creature moved slowly, reaching down to pick a long piece of wood from the snow. It stepped towards him, clearly nervous, ears back and tail wagging tentatively. The human tensed, wondering what the wolf was up to. The wooden pole that it carried could be used as a weapon and he was in no condition to fend of an attack, unlikely as that possibility seemed. Still, he fought to contain the primal ‘fight or fight’ reflex that rose unbidden in the back of his mind. He stood rooted to the spot as the wolf approached to within a few feet.

For the first time, he was able to see the creature clearly, and he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Never once did he imagine that such a creature could exist. He looked it over from head to toe. The leather cloak that it had worn the first time he had seen was gone. All it wore now was a leather belt around its waist, which was almost lost to sight under the thick fur that the wolf had. Upon the belt, a sheathed knife with what looked like an antler handle was affixed. As his eyes roved over the wolf, he noted with numb surprise the subtle patterns in its fur. It’s chest and belly were a solid off-white. Long black tipped guard hairs began to invade the white fur around the shoulders and neck, growing much thicker on the wolf‘s sides and back, and running down the top of it’s arms to end near the wrists. The creature’s face had an almost husky-like mask to it, but it was not as sharply delineated. The fur around the eyes and the top of its muzzle had a salt and pepper colouring which blended into the white that began on the sides of its muzzle and ran down its throat. Its pointed ears were rimmed with dark grey, almost black fur, while the insides were almost white. Its eyes were a piercing amber hue, and he saw intelligence in them. His mind reeled at the thought. An intelligent animal. A wolf’s head on a vaguely human shaped body. An impossibility. Troubled thoughts swarmed through his head. How was such a thing possible? The wolf stared at him evenly. It held out the wooden pole to him. The human stared at the proffered chunk of wood and his brow furrowed. When after a moment he didn’t take it, the wolf pulled it back and mimicked using it as a crutch. Then it held the pole out towards the human again.

The human blinked in surprise. Did he really just see that? The wolf waited silently for him to make up his mind. After a moment, the human reached out a tentative hand and grasped the pole. The wolf wagged its tail a few times and nodded. The human regarded the wolf with profound surprise. It had made him a crutch? Suddenly his situation didn’t seem that bad anymore. He smiled and nodded in return. “Thanks.” He said.

The wolf’s ears came forwards and it cocked its head to the side, looking a bit like a curious dog. It smiled, or at least he thought it smiled. The wolf’s expressions were a little difficult for him to discern. It motioned over towards the fire. He nodded and grinned a lopsided grin. He understood that part at least.

The makeshift crutch made walking a bit easier for him, and the pain in his ankle lessened from excruciating to just plain agonizing. It was with great relief that he reached the cooler beside the fire and was able to sit down. He was surprised to see that the wolf had hovered nearby, apparently ready to aid him should he stumble as he made his painfully slow progress towards the fire. He began to rethink his situation as the reality of current events slowly sunk into his addled brain. He just might recover from this injury as long as this strange wolfish creature would lend a hand. He really hoped that that would be the case.

Once he had made himself as comfortable as possible, and had leaned his crutch against the cooler beside him, the wolf returned to its seat opposite him. The fire crackled and popped between them as they regarded each other silently. The wolf reached down to turn a couple of sticks on which two chunks of meat were skewered. At first glance they looked like small chickens, then the human realized that they must be grouse. His stomach rumbled and he licked his lips. Food, and enough for two.

The wolf looked up at the human, its amber eyes searching his face. It opened its mouth to speak, but hesitated briefly. A strange look clouded its features and the wolf cocked its head to one side. After a second or two, it gave its head a brief shake and started over again.

It pointed a clawed finger at its chest and said “Kendri.”

The human raised an eyebrow. That must be the creature’s name. The briefest sensation of familiarity tickled something deep in the dark recesses of his mind before fading into the background. A frown settled upon his features and he was silent for a moment. The wolf reached down to check on breakfast again.

The human cleared his throat. Since introductions were in order, he pointed a thumb at his chest.

“Chris.”

Kendri looked up at him, her tail waving gently side to side. “Chris.” She repeated, pronouncing his name with surprising clarity. A grin split her muzzle.

Chris smiled in return, a grin that slowly faded as realization struck home. She? Just how did he arrive at that conclusion? He eyes flickered over the wolf’s flat chested, fur covered figure. There were no obvious outward indications as to whether the wolf was male or female. Perhaps its hips were a little wider than its shoulders, but the thick fur coat hid everything else. His brow wrinkled as he thought furiously. The thought had just popped into his head and it just felt right that the wolf would be female. He tried to shake away the unease that suddenly gripped him. Something swirled in the back of his mind, and memory flashed to life with a vividness that made his jaw drop. In an instant, he was back in the depths of the forest, stumbling forwards through the falling snow, his senses dulled with cold. Someone was supporting him on his left side as he staggered painfully onwards. He turned his head and looked down. The wolf was there, one arm around his waist, his arm over its shoulders, fighting to keep him upright. He stumbled and fell to the snow with a cry of pain. The wolf’s head appeared above him, tugging on his arm, yelling, pleading with him to get back up...

The vision dissolved into the smoke curling up from the fire. He stared in shock at Kendri, who was frozen in the midst of pulling the grouse from the edge of the fire. Her ears were back and she regarded him with a wide-eyed look of profound astonishment.

It took Chris a moment to find his voice. “You helped me to get back here didn’t you?” A faraway look clouded his face as he fought to remember more. “I had that terrible nightmare and took off running into the forest...” He shifted uneasily on the lid of the cooler and his voice trailed off. “That must be how I did this.” He grimaced and pointed at his ankle.

Kendri just stared at him. He swallowed convulsively. Something twitched in his head. He continued on, his voice catching in his throat. “You... You came and found me...” He paused for a moment, trying to pull himself together.

“I would have died if you hadn’t done that.” He shook his head sadly, trying to find the words to continue but was unable to. Despair stole over him once more and he held his head in his hands as vivid memories reminded him that he had lost everyone and everything he had ever known.

A gentle touch on his shoulder distracted him and he looked up into Kendri‘s canine face. He hadn’t even heard her get up move to his side. Kendri said something in a gentle tone of voice and handed him one of the sticks that the grouse was skewered upon. He felt a wave of compassion wash over him, and suddenly he felt a bit better. He smiled at the wolf.

“Thanks.”

Kendri wagged her tail a few times and nodded before returning to her seat opposite the fire. She picked up the other grouse, sniffed at it and licked her lips. She gave Chris a toothy grin before pulling a drumstick off and tearing into it with her sharp teeth. She chewed happily and let out a sigh of what sounded like sheer pleasure. Chris shook his head and chuckled. He watched Kendri enjoy her meal for a moment longer, before turning his attention to the grouse-on-a-stick that he held in his hand. He pulled off a drumstick and sniffed it, hot grease stinging his fingers. It smelt surprisingly good. His stomach rumbled in anticipation. He took a tentative bite and chewed slowly. The delicate flavour of unseasoned grouse washed over his tongue and his eyes widened in surprise. This unseasoned, slightly charred bird was better than he thought possible. He took another bite, a happy grin coming to his face as he enjoyed his meal.

A sudden thought came to the forefront. Why was he being so calm and collected? He was sitting in front of a fire eating a meal cooked by a wolf and acting like it was something he did every day. He glanced at Kendri across the fire and frowned. Shouldn’t he be at least a little bit afraid of a creature that was so alien as to defy explanation? He thought that he should be, but as he watched her eat her meal, he realized that it was difficult to be afraid of her. All she wanted to do was help, and though she tried to put on a friendly face deep down she was so sad and so forlorn. He wasn’t surprised at that, after all, she’d been out here all by herself for the better part of two years...
Something flashed in Chris’s head, arcing across his thoughts with a crackling discharge. He froze in mid chew, the partially stripped drumstick half ways to his mouth. What the hell was that? His mind questioned crazily. How did he know...? What the hell was going on here? How were these thoughts getting into his mind? Kendri stared at him, a picture of canine disbelief, ears back and mouth hanging open.

Comprehension struck him, and it wasn’t gentle. It was coming from her! He was seeing bits and pieces of what was inside her head, and she was experiencing the same thing from him! His mind reeled. All further thoughts fled from his grasp and all he could do was stare in shock at the wolf across the fire.

One thought crept back into the empty space left by the others when they fled. Chris grimaced and held his head in his hands. He’d thought that the last weeks had been out of this world. Somehow, he didn’t think things were going to improve anytime soon.

						—Chapter 8—

 The human appeared to be healing up well. He still had a slight limp and had stayed close to camp over the last few days but at least he was walking without the aid of his crutch now. Kendri smiled to herself. A few more days and Chris’s ankle should be well enough to support him without much pain, and it was her intention to lead him back to the cabin she called home when that time came. Winter was well on its way to taking hold over the land and the human’s crude shelter would do little to help him survive the bitterly cold months that lay ahead. She’d seen how the cold affected him and it was surprising to her that a creature almost totally without fur could endure it. Sure, he did have lots of clothing, but somehow she didn’t think that that was the same as a good thick pelt.

Kendri sighed and scratched the side of her muzzle. It was a chilly morning and her breath condensed into the frosty air, briefly hanging around her head before dissipating. Ice started to form on her whiskers and she felt the bite of the cold air on her sensitive nose. Chris had yet to crawl out of his shelter and she was beginning to wonder if his kind were like the bears and if he was going to hibernate through the winter under that pile of green cloth. That could be possible, she thought, but somehow she doubted it unless his kind were able to survive being frozen into a solid block while they waited for the spring thaw.

A wisp of smoke rose straight up in the still morning air and Kendri stared at it thoughtfully as it danced through the shafts of sunlight that trickled through the branches of the trees. The fire that smouldered at the mouth of the human’s shelter was kept burning constantly. She had never seen anyone so dependent on fire before. She shook her head. If all of Chris’s kind were like that there must be few trees left where they came from. Fire was a very useful tool and while Kendri understood its uses very well she did not have a constant need for it. Fire was used mostly for cooking food, since only in the deepest cold of the dark winter months did she need to rely on fire for heat.

After stifling a huge yawn, Kendri stood up and stretched. She shook herself, fluffing out her pelt to guard against the cold and wandered over to the mouth of the shelter to check on Chris. She bent down and peered into the dark interior, sniffing. True to form, Chris had pulled himself into a ball under the pile of cloth and nothing of him could be seen except a lump in the middle of the expanse of green. Kendri cocked an ear and listened for a moment to the human’s deep, regular breathing. Satisfied that all was well, she backed out of the shelter and added a few sticks to the fire.

The snow squeaked under Kendri’s footpads as she walked around the small clearing where Chris had built his shelter. She was a bit restless and pondered for a moment what she should do. Since it looked like Chris would sleep for a while yet, she decided that she would go out and do some hunting. They’d eaten of the deer for three days straight and Kendri was in the mood for something different for breakfast. With luck she might be able to get a few grouse or perhaps a tasty rabbit or two and she smiled just thinking about it. She collected her spear and her belt and knife and set out west, heading up the valley and angling down towards the river that lay nestled like a blue ribbon among the thick evergreens.

There was not a cloud in the sky on this morning and barely a breath of wind stirred the trees as Kendri jogged through the forest. Her body soon settled into the familiar rhythm of a distance-eating jog and she found that she was smiling to herself as she travelled down the narrow trail. She loved mornings like this, where all was still and quiet and cool and the sun welcomed the land to a new day in a clear blue sky. It was days like this that she remembered the simple pleasures of going for a run over the open grasslands, enjoying the freedom of youth and the company of her friends...

Her smile faltered a bit and so did her pace through the woods. Such memories echoed loudly in the emptiness of her heart and it pained her greatly when they sprang unbidden into her mind. She had pushed those old memories so far away that it was almost like they weren’t even hers anymore. How she wished that she could just forget such things and carry on as if the last nineteen years of her life had never happened but that task was nothing short of impossible. She couldn’t deny who she was and what she had become no matter how hard she might try. Kendri clenched her teeth and picked up her pace through the trees. Another thought that suddenly sprang to mind was that she used to go on these morning runs whenever there was something bothering her and she needed to get away from life with the pack and think things over on her own.

There had been a lot on her mind lately that was for sure. Questions about the stranger and why exactly he was here had been nagging at her for days and just recently strange dreams had begun to invade her sleep. Painful memories of her past lurked in the shadows of her thoughts like a watcher in the woods and she was beginning to find it difficult to concentrate on anything without being distracted by the growing turmoil in her mind. To confuse matters further, it appeared that she and Chris shared some sort of weird mental connection that allowed for an occasional and very unnerving exchange of thoughts and feelings. All of this new strangeness was building up to the point of overload and the only way she knew how to deal with it was to run away and be alone with her thoughts for a time. She wondered for a moment how Chris was dealing with things on his end. Everything that was happening had to be just as strange, if not stranger to the human as it was to her.

Kendri meandered back and forth through the trees, following game trails and not heading in any direction in particular. Her mind wandered elsewhere on an introspective roller coaster ride and she wasn’t paying much attention to what went on around her. Her sensitive ears picked up the sound of running water from the nearby river and on an impulse she turned towards it. Before she knew it she was standing on the ice encrusted bank of the river among the long shadows of the trees that slanted across the untouched snow. Crystal waters swirled and gurgled against a paper thin ledge of ice that was as clear as the blue sky above and her mind flashed back through time to another cold and clear winter day...

...Fire crackled cheerfully in the stone hearth, pushing back the icy fingers of winter that crept in under the walls and the door and bathed the interior of the hut in a warm, flickering light. Kendri was helping her mother as she bustled about the hut, humming a tune to herself as they prepared the noon meal. Several large stones, warmed in the fire, were dropped into a large bag full of meaty stew and left to cook the food with their residual heat. The sounds and smells of home enveloped Kendri and she knew happiness and the delight of a close family...

...There was a noise at the door and her little brother rushed in, an excited grin on his muzzle and his tail wagging furiously. “Father’s back!” He cried before rushing back out the door. Kendri perked up and looked at her mother. Her mother smiled, a soft smile full of warmth, and told her to go greet him. Kendri rushed excitedly out of the hut and into the frigid winter air at full speed, weaving through the other huts in the village and following her little brother to the edge of the village. Kendri shielded her eyes from the glare of the sun and stared out over the snow covered land. Two people could be seen out in the open, two tall figures trotting across an expanse of pristine snow under a cobalt sky. One of them raised an arm and waved and Kendri and her brother took off across the snow towards the figure, racing to greet their beloved father. Kendri was the eldest child in the family by two years and there had always been a bit of rivalry between her and her younger brother. Kendri had always been the faster and stronger of the two but the gap between them had slowly been closing. She found that no longer could she outrun her younger sibling. He stayed right beside her as they raced flat out across the snow, tongues lolling in the icy air. She couldn’t deny it. Her baby brother was growing up...

...Their father dropped his heavy pack to the side and welcomed his pups with open arms and an excited grin. The two youngsters ran up to him and tackled him into the snow. Laughter and yips of excitement rang out into the still air and the elder Wolf was almost lost from view beneath the bodies of his ecstatic pups, while his travelling companion stood by and chuckled at the scene that played out before his eyes...

...Panting happily, Kendri’s father shouldered his pack and began walking towards the village. His children raced out in front of him, chasing each other through the snow. Many of the inhabitants of the village emerged from their huts as the group approached, ready to welcome the long absent Traders home...
...Kendri’s mother stood at the head of the throng gathered at the edge of the village. Her mate had been gone for three long months and she could barely contain her excitement at his return. She knew that his life as a Trader meant that he would spend long periods of time away from her and the pups, but that understanding couldn’t banish the loneliness of the dark winter nights when her mate was away from her. She ran out to meet the one she had missed so much and he met her with open arms and a warm smile. She inhaled deeply of his familiar, reassuring scent and let herself melt into his arms...

...Kendri’s father reluctantly released his mate and greeted each of those in turn that had braved the frigid air to greet him. He finally came before the Alpha and his mate and lowered his ears and ducked his head in a sign of submission. He announced that he and his companion had brought many interesting items back with him from his trip to trade with the people to the south but that before he would show them at Council he would like to get a hot meal in his belly and spend some time getting reacquainted with the family that he had been away from for too long. The Alpha smiled and nodded and said that he would call the Council for the next morning...

...The hut smelled of cooking food and fur and warm bodies. It was the smell of home, of security, of happiness. The old Wolf breathed in deeply and closed his eyes as the sensations of home curled around him. He sighed happily and dropped his pack on the dirt floor. He sat down beside the fire and his family crowded around him as they waited eagerly for tales of his journey. A smile was on his face as he opened his pack and presented a gift to each member of his family. He started with his mate. To her he gave a beautifully crafted bracelet made of intertwined strands of a metal that glittered brightly in the light from the fire. Kendri’s mother was at a loss for words when she saw it. Her mate grinned at her and slipped it on her wrist. It was a perfect fit and she hugged him tightly and licked him on the cheek. The next to receive a gift was Kendri’s brother. He received a knife in a leather sheath. The handle was made of antler and as he drew it from its sheath the blade glinted in the firelight. A blade of metal, not one of stone, a rare and expensive item. Her brother’s mouth hung open in shock as he stared at it and her father chuckled at the expression on his son’s face. At last, he turned to his eldest child. He had something special for her he said. From his pack he pulled something that sparkled enticingly in the firelight. He told her to hold out her paw and into her open palm he dropped something that made Kendri gasp when she saw it. It was a necklace of such intricate craftsmanship that it took her breath away. Tiny loops of golden metal were linked together to make a chain so fine that she was almost afraid to touch it for fear of damaging it. Her gift lay in her palm, gleaming like a pool of liquid fire in the light from the hearth and she stared at in it awe. Her father smiled at her and lifted the necklace from her paw. A circular pendant hung from it, a delicate rendition of the world carved in dark green stone. Two wolves lay curled nose to tail around the circle that represented the Earth, the Alpha and his mate that watched over all life on the world. Kendri’s father leaned forward and placed the necklace around his daughter’s neck and nodded in satisfaction as the glittering chain settled in his daughter’s grey fur. He smiled happily. It was a fitting gift from a father to his child who was soon to be an adult. Kendri jumped forward and hugged her father tightly, ecstatic beyond words that her father had finally returned home and that he had brought her such a wonderful gift...

Kendri looked up, her eyes moist with remembrance. Why did such happy memories have to bring such pain? She still had that necklace that her father had given to her on that cold day long ago. She hadn’t worn it in over two years and kept it hidden away because of the feelings it brought to the surface every time she laid eyes upon it. She looked down to where her paws were clenching her spear in a painfully tight grip. She forced herself to relax and sighed as she let the memories fade into the background. She had been happy once, even though it felt like a lifetime ago. She dropped her gaze to the swirling waters and let the dancing currents mesmerize her for a moment. She wondered if she would ever know happiness again or if she was destined to live out the rest of her years in lonely isolation. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply of the cool air, seeking to calm the turmoil within. It didn’t help much.

When she opened her eyes, movement across the creek caught her attention and she found herself staring into the curious eyes of one of her wild cousins. A smile crept across Kendri’s muzzle as another wolf emerged from the trees, and then another. Her people had always held their four legged relatives in high regard and to see one was considered good fortune. There were ancient legends that told of a time just after the Beginning of all Things when Kendri’s people had lived as their four legged cousins did, running in packs, roaming freely over the land, following and hunting the animals that shared the world with them. That was before her people had begun to make and use tools, before they had learned to speak and when they could still run on four legs as easily as they could on two. Life was simpler in those old times. Hunt, play, sleep, mate. Raise the pups, show them the ways of the hunt, and the cycle would begin anew. Life was brutal and short and memories were fleeting things, often lost in the dim self awareness of a limited consciousness. Pain faded quickly instead of lingering for years.

A sudden longing to join her wild relatives filled Kendri’s breast. She would give up everything she had just to be able to forget and to feel alive again. The wolves across the river stared at her with wary curiosity, three pairs of amber eyes that bored into hers with piercing intensity. Kendri wondered what it would be like to run with them, to live the simple life where all of her troubles would seem so inconsequential, replaced by the raw needs of survival. The wolves turned and melted silently back into the trees, one by one. The last one, a lean and rangy beast with fur as black as charcoal, remained a moment longer on the bank of the river, his unblinking yellow eyes fixed on her. He at last turned to join his pack, trotting away and fading ghostlike into the trees. Kendri envied him. Her ears and tail drooped and she turned away from the river with a heavy heart, barely feeling the gentle embrace of the forest wrap itself around her.

It was hard for Kendri to get her mind back on track after the encounter by the river. She wandered aimlessly for a time, her thoughts drifting away on seemingly random tangents. Snow crunched under her feet and the sun glittered through branches frozen into winter stillness. She tried to concentrate on hunting, but the utter silence that surrounded her made it difficult for her to push thoughts and memories away. Fragments of her old life kept trickling back to the forefront. Faces of old friends passed through her mind’s eye and bits of conversation echoed in her ears. She almost forgot where she was and was startled when a grouse flushed away from seemingly right out from under her feet. Her heart pounded dully in her ears as she watched it fly away through the trees. She sighed and her shoulders slumped. Her father would have scolded her for making such a mistake, for letting her thoughts distract her from the hunt. Kendri shook her head sadly. What was happening to her that she was so distracted? When Chris had lost himself in the storm, she had known that there would be a price to awakening old feelings, but it had seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Was this her punishment then, to have her mind destroy itself from within? Kendri walked slowly down the trail, the end of her spear dragging through the snow. Her head was down and her tail hung lifelessly behind her as she stared at the snow just in front of her feet. She let the sound of each footstep fill her head as she sought to push away her distracting thoughts.

She came across a spot in the trees where the sun shined through unobstructed and she sat down in the snow there and put her back against a tree. She felt the feeble warmth of the winter sun against her pelt and her mood brightened slightly. Her thoughts wandered to the human and a serious frown appeared on her muzzle as she thought hard. She planned to lead him to the old shack that she inhabited sometime in the next few days and she wondered whether that was a good idea or not. Despite the fact that she had followed and watched him for nearly a week and had spent much time in his company over the last several days, he was still an unknown. She had no clear idea what his behaviour would be like, spending the winter cooped up in an old cabin with someone as alien to him as he was to her. She’d sensed his emotions and what she had felt there had surprised her. He knew fear, but his fear was not of her. He also knew loneliness and the pain of loss and she got the impression that the situation he found himself in made him distinctly uneasy. His feelings and actions towards her had never been violent but he did seem a little suspicious and wary of her. She figured that was a normal reaction. She felt the same way about him after all.

Kendri smoothed down a patch of fur on her left arm and looked up into the trees. The occasional exchanges of thoughts and feelings that passed between her and Chris, unnerving as they were, made it seem like they were supposed to be together. She cast a suspicious eye up towards the clear sky. She had almost stopped believing in the Gods over the last two years but now she was wondering if she was being set up for something. She sighed in frustration and closed her eyes for a moment. She did feel better with Chris around, that was the strange thing. Was she so desperate for social contact that she was willing to spend the winter in the company of a total stranger that wasn’t even of her own kind? The last two years hadn’t been easy on her, that was for sure, but she had learned how to deal with being alone. Why then did she feel drawn to this furless, tailless giant? He had a weapon that called down Thunder from the sky to kill at great distances, a weapon that he could turn against her and there was nothing she could do to defend against it. Yet, she thought as she stood up and brushed some snow off of her pelt, that weapon of his would be a great aid when it came to hunting, and hunt they must if they were to survive the dark and cold months that would soon hold the land in a frigid grip.

In any decision, there was always some element of risk. Kendri remembered her father telling her that. It was that risk, he had told her, which sometimes paid great rewards. Kendri nodded to herself as she realized that thought. She would take the risks involved in bringing the human back to the cabin. If all went well, the rewards could be great. She felt a smile grow on her muzzle as she stalked up the trail. Her mind was finally clear and she let herself sink into the hunt. The coming winter promised to be an interesting on to say the least. There was much she had to do to prepare, but first she had to find some breakfast.

						—Chapter 9—

The wolf was up to something and Chris wasn’t quite sure what it was all about. With many exaggerated hand gestures and some unintelligible and somewhat growly mutterings she had been trying to make him understand that she wanted him to follow her. At first Chris had been rather hesitant to leave his camp and rightly so. His ankle still wasn’t one hundred percent and he wasn’t exactly sure where the wolf wanted him to go or what she had in store for him once they got there. Then there was the matter that everything he had left to him was contained within the small circle of his camp and he didn’t particularly want to leave any of his stuff behind. However, the wolf was persistent, and after several failed attempts at getting him to follow her it was easy to see that she was getting frustrated. Her ears were back, her tail held motionless and her entire posture radiated annoyance. She glared at him for a moment and let out a long and very human sounding sigh. She appeared to do the canine equivalent of counting to ten before she took a deep breath and started her act over again. She trotted out to the edge of camp, firmly planted the butt of her spear into the snow and mimed at him to follow her. When he didn’t budge from his seat by the fire, she sighed again and leaned heavily on her spear. She stared down at the snow and said something in a tired sounding voice before she raised her head to stare at him. Her amber glare was deep and penetrating. Chris had the distinct feeling that she was starting to think that he didn’t understand what she wanted.

For several minutes the wolf stood motionless at the edge of camp. Chris thought she looked just about ready to leave without him. She finally stood up straight, cleared her throat, and came several steps closer. Chris eyed her curiously. After casting a rather worried looking glance at the sky, she mimed at him to follow her again, this time with more urgency in her actions. Chris frowned slightly. Whatever it was that she wanted of him, she was becoming adamant about it. Partially to see how far she would go and mostly because he was reluctant to leave the cozy circle of warmth cast by the fire, he decided not to move for the time being. That did it for Kendri. She threw her spear down in disgust and vented a frustrated growl. She crossed her arms and shook her head slowly from side to side. She stood there in that position for a moment, giving him one of the most penetrating stares that he’d ever been on the receiving end of before she stooped to pick her spear from the snow. She gave him one last exasperated glance and turned away to slowly walk out of camp. This time she did not try to get him to follow her.

“Okay, okay, You win.” The sound of his voice stopped Kendri in her tracks. She turned around slowly and glared at him.

Chris levered himself to his feet. Kendri just stared at him. Even though his ankle was mostly healed, Chris picked his crutch from where it leaned against his shelter and then slung his rifle over his shoulder. As he walked slowly towards Kendri, he wondered what it was that she wanted of him and where she intended to lead him. She wagged her tail briefly at his approach and then turned away, leading him into the forest, heading uphill and away from the river that coursed through the depths of the valley.

A pattern soon emerged. The wolf would range out ten or twenty metres ahead of Chris then she’d stop and wait, turning to watch him slog painfully up the trail she’d broken through the snow. His ankle had been fine at the start of this journey but nearly an hour of arduous hiking through the snow had aggravated the nearly healed sprain and slowed his progress to a painful limp. He stopped and leaned heavily on his crutch for a moment and paused to catch his breath. Kendri watched him with unblinking amber eyes from short metres away. Her tail wagged a few times when she caught his eye. He thought she looked uneasy about something. She kept eyeing the sky warily and scenting the breeze at every opportunity and he wondered why. Chris thought about that for a minute. The day had become eerily still and clouds had drifted in from the north to blot out the sun. He’d heard stories that animals were more sensitive to changes in the weather than humans were and he wondered if that was the cause of the wolf’s concern. Maybe there was a storm coming. He looked up at the sky for a moment and scratched his chin. Whatever it was that had Kendri on edge, it was beyond his abilities to sense it. He shrugged and shifted his slung rifle to his other shoulder.

More snow would not be particularly welcome at this time and it would certainly not make his situation any easier. Almost all of his equipment and supplies were back at his camp and he did not relish the thought of trying to find his way back there during a blizzard. Why he had allowed himself to be led out here into an alien forest by an equally alien creature was a mystery to him. He wasn’t sure why, but it had seemed like the right thing to do at the time. He sighed and his shoulders sagged. If it snowed enough, there was a good chance that he’d never be able to find his way back to his camp.

Kendri began to make her way back down the tail towards him, probably wondering why he hadn’t started walking again. She came up close, her face a question mark with perked ears. Her tail wagged hopefully.

Chris couldn’t help but smile at the wolf. Her canine appearance lent a sense of familiarity to anyone who had ever owned a dog. Her moods were so easily read and it brightened Chris up for a moment to see something that was so familiar in a land that was so alien. A sudden pang darkened his mood and he sobered abruptly. He wondered if anyone was taking care of his dog at home right now.

“I’m coming, don’t worry about me” Chris said with a wave of his hand as he limped forward a couple of steps. “I’m just a little slow, that’s all.”

Kendri’s tail wagged harder and her muzzle split into a canine grin. Chris smiled back. Kendri ran ahead a few steps and stopped, looking back over her shoulder at Chris.

“Go on, I’ll catch up.” He waved her ahead with a grin. The wolf raced back up the trail, a spring in her steps. He suddenly noted how the wolf was taking extra time to trample down the unbroken snow ahead in an effort to make it easier for him and his injured ankle to stumble along. Once again, he was surprised by her actions. They showed a depth of compassion that he would never have suspected from something that looked nine tenths like a wild animal. He shook his head in wonder and stumbled slowly along the path that Kendri made for him through the snow.
An hour later things were much the same and Chris’s curiosity was beginning to get the better of him. He was weary to the bone yet he kept pressing himself onwards, always wondering what lay around the next bend in the trail. Kendri seemed to be getting more and more anxious the longer they hiked.

Chris’s mind worked overtime as he slowly worked his way up the trail, Kendri a few metres ahead of him. She had to be leading him somewhere she thought important, somewhere where she thought there would be shelter from the weather, and food. Maybe there was a village of her kind nearby and that’s where he was being led. His thoughts stopped abruptly and his feet almost followed suit. A whole village of wolfy looking humanoids. He didn’t know if he’d be able to deal with that. The picture that suddenly lodged in his mind’s eye made him wonder if he was going to be someone’s next meal. He shook that thought away when he suddenly remembered the brief and undeniably startling connection that he had shared with Kendri several days ago. She was out here all by herself, and had been for nearly two years. Chris relaxed somewhat as those memories returned, but he still wondered just where exactly his guide was leading him. To her camp was the most likely explanation and in order for her to want to bring him along and put up with his slow progress, her camp must be something better than the makeshift lean-to he had hastily constructed. As he trudged along, he tried to picture what it would like. What kind of structure would her kind build? Something like a tepee perhaps, a log frame wrapped with animal hides? Maybe they built with wood, or perhaps with stone. Maybe their homes would be like dens; dark tunnels leading to rooms hollowed out below ground level. What ever it was that Kendri lived in, he hoped it was at least warm. The wind had recently picked up and it was distinctly chilly on the rare occasions that it penetrated the thick evergreens that surrounded them on all sides. Thankfully it hadn’t started snowing yet Chris thought as he stopped for a breather. The wind whooshed in the trees overhead and the forest was filled with an eerie cacophony of squeaking and grating trees. Kendri stopped suddenly and raised her muzzle to sniff the air and her tail began to wag. Without a glance back she ran ahead, elbowing her way through a thicket of close knit spruce trees and disappeared from sight.

Chris suddenly felt very alone. Where was she going in such a hurry? A minute passed and then another, and Kendri still hadn’t returned. Chris began to wonder if she had decided to abandon him to his fate. The squeaking and moaning trees played on his fears and he felt the sudden urge to flee, but to where? He stumbled after the wolf as fast as he was able.

He fought his way through the trees, the thick evergreen branches scratching at his face and pushing him off balance. His ankle flared in pain and he stumbled and fell face first into the snow. He lay there for a moment, catching his breath and waiting for the pain in his ankle to subside before he forced himself back to his feet. He struggled to drag his crutch free of the dense knot of branches.
Kendri’s tracks stretched out before him in the thin layer of snow that had managed to penetrate the thick canopy of pine branches overhead. He felt a pressing urge to follow those tracks rise up in him. He bent low to the snow and threaded his way through the dense undergrowth, thick moss spongy under his boots. Winter frozen branches whipped at him as he passed, stinging his face and dragging at his clothing. The scent of pine sap was strong in his nostrils. Feeble light penetrated through the branches ahead of him, moving in curious patterns as the wind buffeted the trees.
Chris burst out of the trees and into the feeble afternoon light. A wave of relief swept through him when he saw Kendri standing just a few metres away. She had her back to him and was staring at something in the trees roughly twenty metres away and her tail was wagging.

The trees were much sparser here, only a few thin and scraggly pines jutted up from the rolling ground that surrounded them. Snow lay thickly here and animal tracks crisscrossed through the trees. Chris saw deer and moose tracks and a trail left by a lone coyote. His eyes wandered over the snow and the trees, taking in every detail. He stopped and stared a look of wide-eyed surprise when he came face to face with something he hadn’t expected to see.

There was a cabin nestled back there in the trees, the kind of structure that brought to mind images of fur trappers and mountain men in the old days, not of wolves that walked on two legs. He glanced over at Kendri for a moment. She was grinning at him and her tail was wagging. She walked towards the shack and waved at him to follow her. Chris stood rooted to the spot for a moment and let his eyes rove over the old shack before he slowly followed the wolf. His mind went into a flurry of action. A cabin. Somewhere relatively protected from the weather, a place where surviving the winter would be far easier.

The cabin was small and rectangular and he guessed that it probably held only one room. The roof was not peaked in the way that traditional houses were. Instead, the front wall of the shack was maybe a metre higher than the back wall to give the roof a gentle slope. A thick layer of moss had been stacked on the roof, probably for insulation value. Horizontal logs made up the walls of the cabin, stacked and notched in the same way as the log cabins he remembered seeing back home. As he drew closer he saw that the log walls had been chinked with generous quantities of moss. A chimney of carefully mortared stone occupied nearly all of one of the side walls, tapering to a neat square as it rose to perhaps a metre above the moss and snow laden roof. A single door constructed from rough sawn planks occupied the center of the front wall. An impressive set of elk antlers had been affixed to the wall above the door, the branching tines reaching up to the pierce the cornice of snow that curled delicately over the edge of the roof. A small window was off to one side of the door, four small panes of glass held in an aged frame. His brow furrowed when he saw that. Glass? Where had this strange creature ahead of him found glass? After a moment of hard thinking that got him nowhere, he pushed that thought away and turned his attention back to the cabin.

There was a sizable stack of firewood piled against the wall opposite the chimney. An indentation in the fresh snow showed that at one time there had been a packed trail that led from the door and around to that side of the cabin. Chris caught a glimpse of a smaller structure hidden away in the trees a short distance behind the cabin. An outhouse? Or perhaps a storage shed. From what he could see of it, it looked a bit big to be an outhouse.

Motion caught Chris’s eye and distracted him from his inspection. Kendri had opened the door of the cabin and was beckoning at him to come inside, a look of concern written on her features. The wind whooshed through the trees and a few haphazard snowflakes carved slanted paths through the clearing. Chris held his breath and entered the cabin.

The interior was gloomy, the air musty and stale and bearing odours of dust, smoke and a vaguely familiar animal smell that had Chris scratching his head until he finally placed it. It was Kendri’s scent, it had to be, but it reminded him so much of his old dog that a momentary frown came to his face before his curiosity pushed it away. He stepped further into the cabin, boots clonking hollowly on the rough plank floor. Kendri stood off to one side, quiet and motionless, letting him adjust to his surroundings at his own pace. Her watchful eyes followed him around the cabin.

The interior held little in the way of furnishings. There was a rough hewn table and chair that occupied the center of the small room. Shelves lined the wall beside the door and there was a small bench under the window in the front wall. A battered and sooty pot sat on the bench next to a corroded knife and a weathered wooden spoon. The shelves held little except a thick layer of dust, a couple of unidentifiable tin containers and an empty glass jar. He frowned and moved on to other things.

Another window graced the center of the back wall, the same four paned design as the one in the front wall. A few snowflakes drifted down outside and the smaller building behind the cabin could be seen through it. He’d have to go and check that out later, he thought as he limped painfully towards the fireplace.

The hearth was a magnificent piece of stonework that took up nearly the whole wall. Someone with considerable skill had managed to stack flat pieces of grey slate on top of one another and mortar them together into something that was almost a work of art. The center of the hearth had been built out from the wall several feet and a low ring of carefully stacked slate encircled the mouth of the fireplace. There was even an arc of edge on slate sheets above the mouth of the fireplace where wall became chimney. A large and very heavy looking frying pan rested on the edge of the ring of stone. Charred remnants of meat and congealed grease still lingered in the bottom of it. Ashes and fragments of charred logs filled the hearth itself and judging by the thick layer of soot on the stones above the fireplace, it had seen some heavy use over the years. A large box constructed from rough lumber lay off to one side of the hearth. Chris stepped over to it and peered inside. It held dry kindling and tinder. More firewood was stacked up against the wall. He shook his head in wonder and turned his attention back to the stonework. The amount of work that it must have taken was nothing short of staggering. Had the wolf built it? Had she built all of this? He wondered as his eyes roved over the rest of the cabin. His gaze snapped over to Kendri. The wolf stood by the door, staring at him with and steady expression. He wondered what she was thinking as she watched him examine the inside of her home.

There was a pile of animal hides close to the hearth and he limped over to them. Deerskins by the looks of them. He poked the pile with the toe of his boot. There was a larger one in the pile that looked as if it might once have belonged to an elk. The sharp scent of leather rose up to his nose. He raised a questioning eyebrow at the wolf. This must be where she sleeps, he thought. Kendri continued to eye him steadily, her face an expressionless mask. Chris’s eyes wandered back over towards the table. He unslung his rifle and propped it up against the bench under the window. His crutch he leaned against the wall. As uncomfortable as it appeared to be, that chair by the table just looked too inviting.

The chair groaned slightly under his weight and he let out a big sigh as he finally let himself relax. His ankle was slowly getting better but it hadn’t really been impressed with the hike to this cabin. He leaned over and massaged the sides of his aching ankle and loosened the laces on his boot. Kendri’s ears went back a bit as she watched him, an odd look evident in her eyes. Sympathy? He couldn’t be sure. Once the pressure on his aching ankle had been relieved somewhat, Chris leaned back and took in a deep breath. His eyes roved over the ceiling. Smallish logs stripped and peeled clean of their bark were spaced at regular intervals. What looked like hand sawn planks had been laid across the logs. Irregular spaces showed between the planks here and there and he began to wonder how waterproof the roof was. Even if it was a bit porous, he’d put money on it that it would be better than his tent or the lean-to that he’d hastily built. As he leaned back and stared at the ceiling he realized that surviving the winter didn’t hold such a bleak outlook now. He smiled a bit at that thought and let his aching body sink as much as it was able into the rough and hard edged chair.

A noise off to his side snapped him out of his reverie and he turned to see that Kendri had pulled open the door of the cabin. His brow furrowed as he watched her back out through the door, waving her arms in an attempt to tell him something. He frowned and raised an eyebrow. It looked like she wanted him to stay where he was. He shrugged and nodded at her. It wasn’t like he felt like going anywhere else at this particular moment anyway. With a perfunctory wag of her tail she shut the door and was gone from his sight. Chris wondered what she was up to now. With little else to do, he let his eyes wander over the interior of this shack again. He’d done some construction work over the years and had even been part of a framing crew for a few summers after he’d gotten out of high school. He had a bit of an idea what it took to build something like this and what he saw surprised him. Whoever it was that had built this shack, they’d had a pretty good idea of what they were doing, especially with all of that stonework on the fireplace. This cabin must have taken almost a whole summer to build, especially if there had only been one person working on it. He frowned and shook his head. He couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that the wolf had done all of this herself. For some reason it just didn’t fit with his impression of her. But if it hadn’t been Kendri, who had built it? Chris sighed and tried to ignore that question. He didn’t particularly feel like wrestling with such things at the moment.

His mind drifted through the nothingness of random thoughts for a few moments. Kendri still hadn’t returned yet and he wondered where she had gone and what exactly she was doing. Now that he had stopped moving he had begun to cool off and his toes and fingers were beginning to feel the cold. He eyed the fireplace idly. Might as well get a fire going then he thought. The energy to get out of his chair was sorely lacking but he forced himself to his feet anyways. The promise of warmth overrode fatigue and a throbbing ankle.

The tinderbox drew his attention for a few moments. There was dry grass and a handful of dry twigs in there and he frowned as he looked at the contents of the box. Where was some good dry paper when you needed it? Nevertheless, he took a handful of the dry grass and a few small twigs and carefully arranged them in the hearth. A groan escaped from him as he pushed himself back to his feet and limped over to the woodpile that lay stacked against the wall. He carefully selected the driest and smallest pieces of wood that he could fined. These he arranged carefully over the dry grass and twigs in the hearth. He groped in a pocket for his lighter and flicked it a couple of times before it lit.

The dry grass caught quicker than he thought it would and the spruce twigs soon lit up. In no time at all, a small fire was crackling away in the slate hearth. He made another trip to the woodpile and picked a few more small and dry pieces of wood and added them to the slowly growing fire. He pulled the chair up close to the fire and let the warmth slowly seep into his aching bones.

The sound of the door opening behind him made his head turn sharply in that direction. Kendri stood in the doorway staring at him with what appeared to be a surprised look on her face. She had what looked to be a chunk of frozen meat in one hand. Her eyes flicked between him and the fire several times, wonder slowly growing on her features. After a moment of curious staring she closed the door behind her and moved into the cabin. She came up slowly and carefully behind Chris, moving beside him to pluck the battered frying pan from the edge of the hearth. She sniffed at it, made a face and turned away to grab a knife from the bench under the window. She used it to scrape the remnants of grease and charred food from the pan into the fire. She deposited the slab of frozen meat into the frying pan. It sounded like a chunk of granite when it hit the metal. She carefully put the pan on the edge of the hearth and then backed away. Chris looked up at her questioningly. Kendri grinned at him and wagged her tail. She said something to him in that musical, growly voice of hers and retreated to the door of the cabin. Chris looked at her and wondered what it was that she was up to now. The wolf opened the door and said something else. He didn’t have a clue what she meant. Before he realized it, the door closed and she was gone. Chris shrugged and turned back to the fire and the chunk of meat that was slowly thawing out on the edge of the hearth. The message the wolf had given him was clear. Stay here, rest, have something to eat. He couldn’t argue with that. The hike to this cabin had made him ravenously hungry and his ankle had had more than enough of him staggering around on it. Chris leaned back and tried to forget about the meat slowly thawing at the edge of the hearth as he let his mind wander. Things were finally looking up. It was about time, he thought.

The wind had brought the forest alive, the spirits of the trees murmuring and groaning to each other as they waited for the storm. A few snowflakes raced past Kendri’s head as she turned to look back at the cabin before it was out of her sight. The thin wisp of smoke that rose from the chimney was soon ripped apart into nothingness by the wind as it rose above the trees. She took a deep breath and held it for a minute, hoping that she had done the right thing. She’d led the stranger to her home and he’d settled in surprisingly well. He’d even managed to start a fire faster than she thought possible. She shook her head in wonder at that. There was no end to the surprises from that pale skinned giant. There were things that she could learn from him, Kendri thought as she turned away from the cabin and disappeared through the trees at the edge of the clearing. She broke into a jog as she started out on the trail that would lead her back to the camp that the stranger had made down in the valley. There was a lot of work ahead of her, she realized as she trotted along the trail. She would try to bring as much of the food that the stranger had left back to the cabin before the storm set in in earnest. Given enough time, she would trying to bring back the rest of the things that he had left at his camp as well. She had no idea what they were for, but the stranger would probably need them.

Feet thudded into the snow and cold air stung nose and tongue as Kendri warmed up enough that she started panting. Hunger gnawed at her belly but she ignored it. She would find time to eat when she returned. Trees groaned and muttered at her as she ran past, yet a happy panting grin was on her face as she jogged. She was starting to feel alive again and it was a strange, almost alien sensation, but it felt good. She hoped that feeling would last the winter, come what may. She stepped up her pace and weaved through the trees, revelling in the simple joy of running, the happy grin on her face widening as the wind whirled around her. 

					—Chapter 10—

Despite all of the ominous foreshadowing, the storm that had threatened so fiercely ended up being a dud. There had been little snow but the wind had come in fiercely from the north overnight and brought with it a bitter cold that had settled over the forest like a smothering blanket. Even as tired as she had been, Kendri had lain awake for most of the night, listening to the groaning complaints coming from the roof of the old cabin and the surrounding trees as the wind tormented them. Despite the inclement weather and the squeaks and groans of the trees and cabin, Chris had slept soundly for the duration of the storm. While she’d lain sleepless in her bed, Kendri’s ears had been closely tuned to the sound of the human’s breathing for most of the night. She was wary of him still, her fear of his strangeness and what he might do to her if she fell asleep constantly in the back of her mind as she tossed and turned in the dark. She kept wondering if she had done the right thing, inviting this stranger into her home. There were so many things about him that she just didn’t understand and many more that made her worry about the sanity of her choice. She knew that the lonely isolation of the past two years had taken its toll upon her and she understood that it was that more than anything else that had influenced her decision to bring the stranger back to her home. Only time would tell if that decision was a wise one. If everything went well, having the companionship and the help hunting could prove to be a great boon. If not, well, she didn’t want to think about what might happen then.

Fortunately, things had gone well enough so far, but not even two days had passed since she’d led Chris here. It was strange feeling though, to have someone else in this cabin with her after nearly two years of enduring a solitary existence. The world suddenly seemed a lot smaller and life that much brighter. She wondered what Chris thought about the whole situation.

When Kendri stepped out of the cabin the next morning, Chris still slept soundly under a haphazard pile of deerskins. It was still early but she figured the poor guy must have really exhausted himself during the hike from his camp to the relative safety of the cabin. That ankle of his had not healed one hundred percent and he’d shown signs of strain during the trip. She decided to let him sleep and get all of the rest he needed. If he wasn’t awake by the time she returned to the cabin with the last load of his stuff from his camp, then she’d start to worry.

The cold north wind still blew through the forest, but it was much subdued compared to last night’s angry intensity. The sky had begun to clear and as the morning light slowly grew in the east Kendri knew that the next few days were going to be cold ones indeed. Winter had arrived and it would be many months before she and Chris would again know the warmth of the sun. There would be cold and dark days ahead, long days of boredom in the cabin when the snow outside lay half of her height deep and the air stung deeply in one’s chest with each breath. One more cycle of the moon and the Long Night would be here. Kendri wondered whether the two of them would be able to endure those unending days of darkness when the sun slept in the south and did not return to cast light over the land for seven days time. Such times belonged to the moon and the stars and the dance of the Spirit Lights overhead. Patience frayed in those dark days and tempers flared as people found it nearly impossible to escape from each other and the frigid darkness that surrounded them on all sides. Legends told of evil spirits that roamed the forests during the Long Night, waiting to steal souls away from those bold or foolish enough to enter the dark and frozen forests. For Kendri’s people, The Long Night was a time of solemn ceremony, of fasting and praying and sacrifice to ensure that the sun would return to warm the land. Kendri wasn’t so sure about those old ways anymore. The sun would return, as it always did, even if she did nothing about it. She’d found that out over the last two years and often wondered about it. When it came right down to it, there were a lot of the old beliefs that she’d questioned over the past two seasons. Being alone and having so much time to herself had allowed her much time to think on things she normally wouldn’t have questioned.

Kendri stepped off of the porch and into a land of strange drifts sculpted by the wicked north wind. In some places the wind had swept away all of the snow and frozen moss and grass poked through the cover of white. In other places the snow was piled up to half of her height. She sighed and regarded the drifts morosely. She was still a bit tired from all of the work she had done the day before and the sleepless night she’d just been through wasn’t helping her situation either. She wanted nothing more than to curl up into a ball and sleep the day away but she had one last task to accomplish before she would let herself give in to exhaustion. One thing remained at the human’s old camp and it was her intention to go and check it out this morning. There was a strange blue object of some sort there. She had no idea what it was for or what was in it but she had decided that she would bring it back anyways. Chris might need whatever that thing contained and even if he didn’t it would be a nice gesture. For all she knew that blue box could have some special meaning to him.

Kendri slowly picked her way through the meandering drifts, muttering occasionally under her breath when a particularly deep or big drift forced her to take a detour. Her ears and nose unconsciously monitored her surroundings and before long the strangest sensation slowly grew over her. She didn’t notice it at first and later she tried to ignore it but when the fur on the back of her began to stand up in its own accord she suddenly realized that there was something strange going on. She stopped for a moment and remained completely silent. Her ears and eyes were the only parts of her that moved. Something was out there and it watched her with an intensity that couldn’t be matched by any animal she knew of. She felt a disturbing intelligence behind that stare and a sudden chill ran up and down her spine. She ran a paw down the back of her neck in an effort to smooth down the fur that was standing at attention there but her body was having none of that. The fur sprung straight back up as soon as she removed her paw. Kendri looked uneasily back over her shoulder and her lips curled away from her teeth as fear took root deep in her belly. One paw darted to the knife on her belt and her muscles were on edge, ready to fight or flee at the slightest provocation. Her nose worked overtime and her ears twitched madly, trying to pin down the location of the watcher. Maddeningly, she couldn’t detect anything out of the ordinary. Just when she was beginning to question her sanity, the feeling suddenly abated and with it went Kendri’s adrenaline rush. She was left feeling very alone and vulnerable in the trees, her heart pounding in her ears and wondering if her senses were playing tricks on her. The uneasy feeling remained and she decided that it would be a good idea to leave the area and she did so quickly, casting a nervous and slightly fearful look back over her shoulder as she trotted through the trees.

A very fresh set of deer tracks across the snow in front of her several minutes later was a welcome distraction from the strange encounter moments earlier. She scanned the woods in the direction the tracks led and crept up close to the trail. The swirling wind told her that the animal was close and her stomach rumbled in anticipation. Her paw instinctively went to the knife on her belt and lingered there for a moment. She almost went after the deer but she managed to force her instincts away and kept heading toward the human’s old camp. There was food aplenty waiting back at the cabin and there was no reason to exert a lot of effort right now just to get breakfast. Sure, she would have the satisfaction of fresh meat still warm and full of blood but it would easily double the amount of work she would have to do. She already had more work to do than she really wanted. She stepped away from the tracks and continued her winding path down towards the valley.

It seemed to take forever for Kendri to find her way back to Chris’s old camp. Those damned snowdrifts kept blocking her way and forcing her to find easier routes around them and she was panting up a storm by the time she finally came to the creek that ran past the human’s old camp. She paused a moment to get her bearings and put her nose to the wind and the sensation of being watched crept bag into her head to nag at her. She did her best to ignore it and thought hard for a moment, her eyes clouding over as an expression of extreme concentration came over her face. Those annoying drifts had obscured most of the familiar landmarks that she had relied on the day before. She sniffed carefully, seeking to pull the familiar from the usual jumbled background of forest odours. Her tail wagged a couple of times and downstream she went.

The camp was empty of all but the snow and wind but Kendri approached cautiously nonetheless. Old habits were hard to break and she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was invading someone else’s territory. Chris’s scents still lingered here, bringing back memories of those first few days when she had followed him, unseen and unheard, as she tried to figure out what he was and what his intentions were. A brief smile flashed on Kendri’s muzzle as she remembered their first meeting. She’d never forget the look on his face when his eyes had finally met hers. The surprise was easy to see, even on his strange face.

The blue box lay close at paw and she approached it uneasily. She didn’t like most of the objects the human had brought with him. They smelled strange and felt even stranger under her fingers. This bright blue thing was a prime example of that. It smelled of things she’d never encountered before. Sure, there were familiar scents like smoke, grease, and Chris’s own unique scent but there were other odours there that were completely alien to her. She didn’t like those ones.

Snow had drifted up over one side of the box and Kendri poked it experimentally with a toe. It didn’t budge. There was something affixed to the side of the thing that looked like it could be a handle of some sort. She reached out slowly and took the thing in her paw. The alien material was cold and slick under her finger pads. She pulled hard on the handle and the thing still didn’t even budge. She pulled her paw back and glared at the stubborn container. The Gods bedamned thing had apparently frozen to the ground. Kendri circled it a few times, sniffing intently. She came back to the exposed side and after moment of thought she planted a sharp kick with her heel to the top of the box. With a crack and a cacophony of muffled metallic clanks the thing came loose and snow cascaded off of it. Kendri jumped back and stared at the blue thing with wide eyes, her ears back and lips curling up unconsciously. She didn’t like being startled but she liked those strange clanking noises even less. She almost growled at the thing but caught herself when she realized how stupid that would sound, growling at some inanimate blue box. She shook herself and stalked around the thing in a slow circle. It remained silent and immobile and she regarded it with pricked ears and suspicious amber eyes. She wondered what exactly was in that box that could make such strange noises. After a moment of thought she shook her head and decided that it would probably be better if she didn’t know. Some of the human’s possessions had great power and she feared what might happen to her if she disturbed them. Indecision gripped her and she almost left the strange container in the snow and returned to the cabin. She stopped herself just on the cusp of fleeing. That blue container really bothered her and she was loathe to be near it. Still, she had made a promise to herself to bring it back to the cabin and she held herself to fulfilling her promises.

Kendri took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Deep down she knew that the blue box was likely harmless but she was having a hard time convincing herself of that. She approached the box carefully and reached out tentatively to grasp one of the handles. She pulled gently. The box slid easily across the snow but more strange and worrisome clanking noises emanated from the mysterious interior of the box. Kendri quickly released the handle and stepped back, sniffing curiously. She decided that she wanted to keep the thing as far away from herself as possible. She reached into the pouch she carried on her belt and withdrew a short length of braided leather rope. She approached the box cautiously, almost afraid that the lid would open and the thing would try to bite her. She tied a hurried loop around the handle and backed away. She tugged on the rope experimentally and was pleasantly surprised by how easily the box slid over the snow. With sudden purpose in her strides she pulled the thing to edge of Chris’s old camp. There she stopped and dropped the rope. There was something she had to do before she left this place for the last time.

It took a few moments but Kendri found just the place she needed. She came across a large boulder a short distance away. The flat slab of stone was a quarter of her height and the wind had cleared most of the snow from the top of it. She sat down cross legged in front of it and closed her eyes for a moment. It had been quite some time since she had done anything like this and she wondered if it would do any good. She had a hard time believing in them these days but she had decided that she would leave an offering here to the Gods if they still listened.

Kendri remained still and silent for a several minutes. The wind brushed questioning fingers through her pelt and was cold on the end of her nose. Her ears were back, her eyes were closed and her head was down, her entire posture radiating submission to the ones who watched from above. Beginning slowly, Kendri spoke in a loud and clear voice, apologizing to the Gods for the weakness in her faith and explaining that after everything she had been through that it was hard to have any faith at all. She opened her eyes and reached up to the sky with both arms, calling out to the ones above for forgiveness. She prayed that the hunting over the winter would be good and asked that they watch over her and Chris. She prayed that she and the human might enjoy good health over the winter and maybe even enjoy some small bit of happiness. At the end of her prayer she asked quietly that she and Chris might survive the winter without tearing each other’s throats out.

Her prayer finished, Kendri removed four small items from her pouch and placed them on the stone before her. The first one was a small piece of dried meat, the last morsel from the first meal she had shared with Chris so many days ago. She’d kept it for this very purpose. The second item was a raven feather, a symbol of the Creator who watched all things from the skies high above. The third item was a tuft of fur that Kendri had plucked from her chest. She’d bound it carefully into a small bundle with a piece of braided grass. She placed it carefully on the windswept stone in front of her. Her fingers hovered over the last object uncertainly. She had found this thing in the snow after Chris had killed that deer. A piece of yellow metal as big around and as long as her index finger, she had plucked it from the snow at the spot where Chris had been crouched when he struck down the deer with Thunder. It was a strange object, this round and hollow piece of metal. The once bright surface had tarnished and grown darker as the days had passed. It smelled of strange things, of acrid smoke and alien strangeness. Kendri was almost afraid to touch it. She could feel the traces of power that still clung to it. Slowly, carefully she placed it beside the other objects on the stone.

Rising to her feet, Kendri stood quietly for a moment, ears back and head down. Then, one by one, she picked each object from the stone and offered it to the four sacred directions. Once to the East for the birth of the light. Once to the west for the onset of night. Once to the north to the home of winter and ice and once to the south to the home of warmth and new life. One final time she raised each item to the sky to those who watched over all life in the forests below. Her prayer done, Kendri breathed a sigh and wandered back over to the blue box. She wasn’t sure that the Gods still watched over her. She had cursed them many times over the last two years, wondering why they had allowed her life to be torn apart as it had. She knew that her offering was insignificant in the face of everything she had done in the last two years but she felt that she had to do something. Whether or not anything would come to pass out of it was another question entirely. Not likely, she thought, as she picked up the end of the rope. She and Chris would have to make their own destinies with no help from those above.

Much grumbling and weird, muffled clanking was heard as Kendri struggled to drag the blue box back to the cabin. A snowshoe hare, its fresh and white winter coat blending in perfectly with the background of winter snows, sat and stared curiously in the direction of the unusual noises. Its large ears tracked the sounds as they bounced through the trees and it sniffed curiously as Kendri swore and kicked at the box where it had become stuck in the snow. Something else soon grabbed the rabbit’s attention. Something else was nearby and the rabbit sniffed curiously before deciding that unknown watchers were a bad thing. It quickly moved to take cover under the low hanging branches of a spruce tree. Kendri felt the subtle touch of the unknown presence as well. The fur on her back bristled and she suddenly stopped fighting with the stuck box. She sniffed the air and a low growl built up in her throat. The Watcher had returned. It was out there somewhere, watching her, something disturbing that was strange and unseen. She could sense its presence but the wind did not betray any unusual scents. Her ears picked up nothing but the usual forest noises. Still, there was something out there, and it was watching her. Kendri was sure of it now. When nothing revealed itself to her acute senses after a few minutes, she turned her attention back to the blue box. She hurriedly picked it from the snow and carried it over the deadfall that had trapped it, ignoring the strange noises and odd sensations of things shifting about that came from within it. She dropped the thing back into the snow, hurriedly picked up the rope and began tugging away in earnest, setting a fast pace back towards the cabin. She cast one last glance over her shoulder back the way she had came. Her teeth were bared and her ears flattened back and the look on her face said that she was tired of this and that she was really looking forward to getting back to the cabin and putting all of this weirdness behind her. Soon she disappeared from view among the snow laden spruce trees. Not long after she did, something moved out over the snow. A patch of air swirled and shimmered, the trees behind it distorting slightly as the patch moved slowly along Kendri‘s trail. A dusting of snow twisted up from the ground, the fine crystals lingering in mid air for a moment before slowly cascading back to the ground as the distortion faded away into the trees.

-----------------------

Frost crystals glittered on worn wood and silence enveloped the cabin in a heavy embrace. Chris exhaled slowly, his breath condensing in a cloud around in front of his eyes. A ball of wolf fur on the floor bounced away from him hounded by the fog of his breath. He pulled his head back under the hides. The deer hair was coarse against his skin and his nose was assaulted by the sharp scent of raw leather and his own rather ripe aroma. The combination of odours was nearly overpowering but he didn’t care. It was warm under there. The fire had long since gone extinct and bitter cold had slowly crept into the cabin, tendrils of frost creeping along the floor as the heat was driven away. Chris shivered momentarily as a patch of skin was exposed to the frigid air. He rolled over and lifted a flap of the hide he lay under and eyed the stone fireplace. He wondered idly whether he would freeze to death before he managed to get a fire going. He knew that he wouldn’t, but still, lighting a fire meant having to leave the warmth of his cocoon of musty old deerskins. Sure, those things stunk but the floor was a whole hell of a lot colder than they were and body heat was far to precious of a thing to waste. Being a lazy and warm lump was far easier than being mobile and cold. He buried his head under the hides for a few more minutes. Boredom crept up far too quickly. He wasn’t tired enough to want to sleep anymore and his mind began to wander.

A few more brain cells began to fire and he suddenly poked his head out of his sanctuary. He glanced around quickly and realized for the first time that he was alone. That damned wolf wasn’t anywhere to be seen. He wasn’t sure that was a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe she had abandoned him to his fate here in this old shack. Such a course of action was possible, he guessed, but it didn’t feel right. This old shack had been lived in for a while. It had the feeling of ‘home’ stamped all over it, and the wolf fur that was clustered into the corners and strewn over nearly every part of this shack combined with the persistent ’doggy’ odour that seemed to have seeped right into the wood led him to believe that this is where Kendri had lived for some time. Chris stared at the battered table in the center of the room. He could see the crystals of frost that had grown on the rough wood. He groaned and rolled on his back to stare at the ceiling, trying desperately to ignore the cold draft that crept down along his neck. This is likely where he would be living for the foreseeable future as well and he wasn’t quite sure what to think about that. Sure, this run down old shack was far, far better than the tent but it was no comparison whatsoever to the home he had lost somewhere behind him. A frown grew on Chris’s face as old memories drifted through his mind. Sadness flowed forth and he sighed heavily. He still couldn’t believe it was all gone. His life hadn’t been perfect by any means but he still dearly missed it. He missed the fun times with his friends, and he fondly recalled foods that actually had flavour. Dreams of hot coffee tormented him and forced air heating and a warm bed were suddenly the things of fond memories. He even missed the daily drudgery that had been his job. Compared to what he had to do now just to survive, that nine hours a day of working in a shop full of noisy machinery was a holiday by comparison.

A groan escaped from Chris as he decided that he better get up and start the fire. Slowly he began the procedure of bringing his clothes, piece by piece, under the hides with him to warm them up before he put them on. He swore and shivered a bit as stiff and unbelievably cold cloth met bare skin. He was really starting to hate this world.

When Chris finally did drag himself out of bed and started to gather the necessary pieces to get the fire going, he ran into a few more problems. Lighting the fire was easy, however the column of cold air that had taken up residence in the chimney overnight stubbornly refused to budge and the cabin began to fill with acrid smoke. Cursing bitterly, Chris staggered over to the door and swung it open. He coughed a couple of times and his eyes burned so badly that he could hardly see. Smoke billowed out the open door and Chris staggered through it and out into blinding brightness and deathly still air, wincing as his ankle flared up in pain. The cold instantly latched on to him, settling on to his shoulders like a great weight and sending exploring fingers into all of the places where the warmth tried to hide. He wasn’t sure how cold it was out there but he guessed it was at least twenty degrees below freezing. With chattering teeth and a shivering body he stamped his feet and rubbed his hands together as he waited for the smoke to clear out of the cabin. For a while there was more smoke coming out of the open door than there was the chimney and he began to worry that he was going to freeze solid before the cabin cleared out. Fortunately for him, only a couple of minutes passed before the fire built up enough heat to overpower the cold air that kept trying force the smoke back down the chimney. It was with an unbelievable sense of relief that Chris entered the smoky shack and pulled himself as close to the fire as he could. He dumped a huge armload of wood on the flames and wrapped himself up in as many of the deerskins as he could pile on. His numb fingers he held out to the fire, hoping that they would soon thaw out. The warmth that radiated from the fireplace was a like a gentle caress as the cold was slowly driven back. A rare smile graced Chris’s face as he finally began to feel a little better and less likely to freeze to death. He shook his head in wonder at the realization of how important such a simple thing like staying warm had become. He’d never had to deal with that problem in such a serious way before and he briefly wondered just how he was going to survive the rest of the winter with all of his extremities intact. He hadn’t been prepared for this kind of weather when he had left for his fateful hunting trip and he lacked the necessary warm clothes to adequately deal with temperatures that bordered on the improbable. Food was going to be another problem as well. He was thankful that he still had his old .303, but he had only brought the one box of ammunition with him. Once that supply was exhausted, things would be far more difficult and the rifle would be little more than an unwieldy club. More problems would also be encountered if the snow got much deeper. He’d have to try and build a set of snowshoes if that happened. Chris sighed and cursed under his breath. Even trying to keep with the demand for firewood looked like it was not going to be fun. Hopefully he’d find some way to get back home before his situation took too many turns for the worse. He had a suspicion though, that he would not be so lucky. He pulled the deerskins tighter around his body and leaned closer to the fire, revelling in the simple pleasure of being warm.

As time passed slowly and his boredom grew, Chris began to wonder just where the heck that wolf had disappeared to. Probably out trying to get food, he suspected, but he wasn’t one hundred percent sure. She was a little unusual, that wolf and Chris almost laughed as that thought crossed his mind. Actually, that wolf was a whole hell of lot more than just ’unusual’ and he really had no idea what drove her to do what she did. He shrugged and stared into the fire. Time would tell what she had in mind and time was suddenly something he had no shortage of. He could foresee a lot of boring days in the months ahead.

Chris stood up slowly, waiting for the expected spike of pain from his ankle. It didn’t come this time and with a raised eyebrow he collected a few more pieces of firewood from the stack along the wall. He eyed the stack critically. He really should bring some more in from outside. With the weather as cold as it was he was going to burn through an enormous amount of wood just trying to keep the cabin at a liveable temperature. Apparently whomever it was that had built this shack had given little thought to insulation and the heat fled through the walls just as quickly as the fire created it. Grumbling to himself, Chris dug through the pile of his stuff that Kendri had stacked beside the table in a search for his gloves. That had been another surprise to him. That wolf had spent most of the last day out and about, hauling almost all of his stuff from his old camp to here at the cabin. He shook his head in surprise and wondered just what exactly here motives were in doing such a task. Maybe she had taken pity on him and his sprained ankle, or maybe she had been curious about all of his stuff and had wanted to keep it for herself. There was a bit of a language barrier between them that prevented him from asking so he just shrugged and picked his gloves from the pile. He warmed them by the fire for a moment before putting them on and heading towards the door.

The bitterly cold winter air stung nose and lungs. Snow squeaked underfoot and wisps of smoke slowly moved through the trees. The sun shone brightly through the forest and dazzled off the snow, the long shadows of the trees held ghostlike in the clouds drifting smoke. The sky overhead was a beautiful deep blue and there wasn’t a cloud to be seen as the dome of artic air overhead crept over the landscape. Chris stomped over to the woodpile against the outer wall of the cabin and brushed some snow of the top row. He began to load up but stopped and looked up when a strange noise reached his ears. His brow furrowed and he strained his ears into the silence, pale eyes searched the trees for any sign of what was going on. He heard the noise again, a strange, muffled metallic thud and it was closer this time. The lines in his brow became deeper as the noise grew louder and more frequent, almost constant. He was just beginning to wonder if he should go get his rifle when Kendri burst out of the trees at a dead run, his old Coleman cooler bouncing and careening across the snow behind her as she towed it with a short chunk of rope. Chris almost broke out laughing at this rather unusual scene until he saw the look on Kendri’s face. She looked scared stiff about something. Her eyes were wide, her ears flat to her head and she didn’t stop running until she was almost through the door of the cabin. She cast off her burden and turned to stare back into the trees, panting like mad. Chris opened his mouth to say something but Kendri waved an arm at him to be quiet. She stopped panting and suddenly the forest was enveloped in an eerie silence punctuated only by the sound of Kendri’s intent sniffing. Chris was startled when he saw the hair on the back of her neck stand up. The low rumbling growl that built up in her throat was more felt than heard. Chris’s eyes darted around, following Kendri’s gaze, trying to see what had gotten her so worked up. The bitter cold was temporarily forgotten and the absolute stillness and silence of the forest began to eat away at him. The hairs on the back of his neck began to stand up as his body tried to warn him about something. He began to get the suspicion that something out there in the trees was watching them and he didn’t like the feeling he was getting from it.

His eyes caught movement off to one side and both his and Kendri’s heads swung as one to the spot. Evergreen branches swayed briefly before stillness took over. Kendri growled louder and Chris found himself wishing for the reassurance of the .303 in his hands. After another moment of silence, during which the sensation of being watched didn’t fade one iota, Chris and Kendri exchanged a glance and backed quickly into the cabin. The door slammed shut and there was the sound of something being braced against it from the other side.

The cooler remained outside, temporarily forgotten. A strange shadow briefly moved over the bright blue box before being lost amongst the drifting smoke and shadows of trees.

					—Chapter 11—

Odd shadows danced on the wall and ice crystals glittered brightly in the orange light cast out from the hearth. The fire popped, crackled, and hissed and a figure moved slowly in the cold, the fog of each breath a wreath around his head that slowly dissipated in the winter air. He approached a small, frost encrusted window, and paused motionless before it for a moment. Shortly he stooped and a mark was scratched on the wall beside the window with the point of a knife, becoming another one of many already etched into the frozen wood. Metal grated on wood as hard as granite as the knife was repeatedly moved up and down, the line becoming deeper and more permanent with each stroke. Beside this line was an odd group of marks. Four short vertical scratches with one longer diagonal line running through them. There were other similar groups of scratches there, six of them to be exact, separated by inconsistent spaces and nearly obscured by the frost that glittered on the wood. There was a brief pause before a sleeve was used to wipe away some of the ice crystals that clung tenaciously to the wall. A pale hand hesitated in the cold air and the knife point wavered uncertainly for a short moment. Slowly, the knife point tapped each group of marks, and Chris’s lips moved soundlessly as he counted the days that he had been stranded in this cabin.

The line he had just scratched on the wall was the thirty-first mark. That should have put the current date at somewhere around the first week of December but he wasn’t so sure of that. The weather over the last month had been nothing short of terrible and very unlike early December for the part of the world he was familiar with. At least a metre of snow had fallen in that time and there had been days of such bitter cold that he thought his lungs were going to freeze solid in his chest with each breath when he dared to venture outside of the cabin. The cold held him prisoner within the four walls of the cabin on those dark days and he rarely strayed far from the hearth. He kept the fire burning constantly yet there were some unbelievably cold some days when the temperature within the old shack remained well below freezing. There had been times in recent weeks when Chris had wondered if he would ever know the pleasure of being warm again

His lips pressed into a grim line, Chris used his sleeve to try and scrape some of the frost from the small window and looked outside. It was dark out there, clear and wickedly cold under a sky of fiercely bright stars. It was almost always dark outside now. The amount of sunlight during the day had slowly dwindled into nothingness in recent weeks. On the rare occasion where the sun was actually able to shine through the frequent clouds it did so for barely half an hour and it was little more than a twilight glow devoid of warmth as the yellow orb lingered briefly on the southern horizon before fleeing to warmer climes. Each day saw less and less of the sun and soon, Chris knew, day would blend into night and his sense of time would be lost as the world around him settled into one long seamless night that would seriously screw with his body’s circadian rhythms. The worry he felt was betrayed in the lines of his face. He now knew that he was much farther north than he should have been and he wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. The other worry was that he knew that the solstice had yet to be reached and he understood with a sinking feeling in his gut that winter was just getting started. There was a whole lot more snow and cold to endure and Chris wasn’t sure how much more of this life he could take.

He had grown thin, his face pale and gaunt under a sparse brown beard. He stunk and he hadn’t had a shower or brushed his teeth in well over a month. His hair was disgustingly greasy and his clothes had become stained and ragged in a few places. Hunger had become his constant companion and at times the empty gnawing in his gut nearly drove him mad. He hadn’t felt well in some time and he often wondered if the periods of famine and the simple fact that nothing but meat had made it into his belly in over a month were slowly killing him. A balanced and nutritious diet was something that his surroundings definitely couldn’t provide. Fresh fruits and veggies were hard to get when the world was frozen solid beneath a thick layer of white.

Finding food had been a constant struggle even with Kendri’s help. Going out hunting and fighting the deep snows sapped his strength and the cold winds stole away his precious body heat faster than it could be replaced. He really needed snowshoes if he was to get anywhere in the wind sculpted maze of drifts that lay outside of the cabin but he really had no idea how to go about making a set. He’d tried to build a set a couple of times but had achieved nothing but frustration. He just didn’t have the knowledge needed and he had come to understand that that lack of knowledge would likely be trap him in the cabin for the duration of the winter. He didn’t relish the thought. His situation had already deteriorated to the point where even going outside to answer the call of nature or gather firewood was a herculean task and the trek down into the valley on par with the climb to the peak of Everest.

God knows he’d tried to go out in search of food the last couple of weeks, even at great risk to himself, but such attempts had been futile efforts. The duration of daylight was just too short for him to get very far before darkness took over again. He was just too weak, the snows too deep, and the signs of game too few and far in between to take the risk of getting caught outside in the dark and potentially getting lost. The forest was eerily silent on those clear and cold winter days and he really didn’t like the feelings that came over him every time he wandered out among the trees. There was this unsettling sensation that had wormed into him over the last few weeks that there was something out there in the forest that watched him from places that he could not see. Sometimes it was hardly noticeable, that odd sensation but other times it really freaked him out. Some times the feeling was so strong that he found himself looking uneasily over his shoulder at the silent forest for a long moment before hightailing it back to the cabin as fast as his hunger weakened legs would let him. Chris shook his head. There were times when he thought that his sanity had long since fled into this snowy wilderness that he could not escape from. There were even some times that he thought he could even hear the distant shrieks of anguish it made as it fought to escape from this godforsaken place.

Kendri had taken to hunting on her own more and more frequently of late. She was doing so even now, out there in the dark and the wicked cold, searching for something else to keep them alive for a few more days. Chris had done his best to hunt with her but he was holding her back and slowing her down, he knew it and she did too. He suspected that much of the reason she had allowed him to accompany her was because of his rifle and the advantage it provided. Even so, big game had been scarce since the heavy snows set in. One deer was all they had managed to bring down and it hadn’t lasted long. The occasional grouse or rabbit that Kendri managed to catch was the only thing that had sustained them for the last two weeks and Chris found himself clinging to the faint hope that a moose would wander out into the clearing in front of the cabin during the brief hours of daylight. A slim chance, to be sure, but only in such unlikely circumstances would he be able to put his rifle to good use. The margin for surviving the winter had become razor thin and Chris knew beyond a doubt that had Kendri not brought him to this cabin he would already be dead, frozen into a human popsicle somewhere down in the valley for the wolves to gnaw on and the ravens to peck away at. It wasn’t a very happy thought.

Despite all that Kendri had done for him, Chris still had problems trusting her. He often wondered what exactly her motives were in bringing him to this place. Nothing made sense and all of the pieces he weighed in his mind just didn’t add up. Was he a simply a companion to help ease the loneliness of the cold and dark winter days? Maybe he was just a hunting partner with an exceptional weapon and an extra set of strong hands that came in handy when the excitement of the kill was over and the hard and dirty work began. Perhaps those things were true, but he had a hard time believing that there wasn’t some other purpose behind the wolf’s actions. His face darkened and a frown grew on his lips. As their situation became more and more desperate would she look at him as food to fill her belly as the world outside slept under the weight of winter? Would she use those sharp teeth of hers to rip out his throat while he slept? Such things weren’t outside of the realm of possibility and he didn’t like to dwell on them. There was also a better than average chance that he was slowly losing his mind. Extreme hunger does strange things to people’s thought patterns, his included, but he couldn’t bring himself to wholly trust the wolf. He would have to watch her very carefully in the months ahead.

Maybe his gun was the only thing that had kept her at bay so far. It was obvious that she was terrified of it and wouldn’t even go near it. Score one much needed point in his favour. He recalled one evening when he had begun to strip down the weapon and became very absorbed in the familiar task of cleaning it. The click and rattle as carefully machined parts snapped and moved together was like a beautiful song in his head and his odd situation had suddenly seemed so far away. He had been so engrossed in his actions that it had taken him a long moment to realize that Kendri had backed into a corner and was crouched there, eyes wide and glistening in the firelight, absolutely terrified, shaking, and thinking she was about to get shot. He figured that the only reason she hadn’t bolted out the door and disappeared into the woods was because that particular escape route would have meant running right past him. He felt a bit bad for scaring her like that but at the same time he had realized that her fear of the gun could be a very useful tool if the need ever arose.

Chris closed his eyes and sighed. He really hoped that he wouldn’t have to threaten the wolf with the rifle or be forced to shoot her if things went sour. He was not a violent man by nature and he didn’t like inflicting unnecessary pain on any living creature. The wolf had done many things to help him and there was no question that he would be dead right now without the aid she had so freely given him. He sincerely hoped that she wouldn’t turn on him but if things went sour and she forced his hand against her, he figured the cabin would prove to be a very lonely place with only one occupant and he didn’t know if his sanity could take that situation and survive. It was having enough trouble already.

One last glance out the window and another sigh escaped Chris’s lips. He slowly meandered back to the hearth and stood silently beside the single chair that had been placed right in front of the fireplace. He lingered there only for a moment before he moved to pick several pieces of wood in an absent-minded manner from a pile stacked haphazardly along one wall. As Chris leaned forward to carefully place the fresh fuel on the fire, the orange light brought the features of his face to life. The heat from the flames revitalized him and brought some warmth back into his thoughts. He tried to remind himself that not everything was bad this winter.

One bright point over the last month was that Kendri had been putting considerable time and effort into learning how to communicate with him. The language lessons were an excruciatingly long and very often frustrating process but the ability to communicate, even with a few mispronounced words was an indescribable gift that almost made the dark winter days worth enduring. Hearing a few understandable words from the wolf made her seem a lot less alien, less worrisome and almost a person.

The wolf often became just as, or sometimes even more, frustrated than Chris during those language lessons. Chris was quickly learning that her language was very odd indeed and he suspected that there were some terms that Kendri sought to teach him that just wouldn’t translate. The wolf had considerable trouble with a few of the English words that Chris tried to teach her and there were times when many hours were spent trying to get the meaning of a single word or phrase across to the other with no success. Both of them often grew so frustrated that not a word would pass between them for nearly a day. In those situations, Kendri would often stalk away into the forest to be by herself for a while and possibly think about just what she was trying to accomplish communicating with such a strange creature as the human. Chris, more often than not, would haunt the cabin and dwell deeply on this odd situation that he could find no way out of.

Despite all of their communication problems, some progress had been made. Chris had learned enough of the wolf’s language to be able to name a few animals and tools, some words describing the weather and to say if he was hungry or thirsty. Even those small things had helped immensely in making the winter seem a little less bleak and lonely. A small bright point in an otherwise dismal situation.

Chris sat down heavily in the chair before the hearth. He had yet to eat today and the hunger pangs in his belly cut deep. For what must have been the thousandth time he looked around the cabin for anything that might be edible. His eyes came to rest on the pile of deerskins he used for bedding and he wondered if his digestive system would be able to pull a few calories from old leather. He grimaced horribly at that thought. There were some old deer bones buried under the snow outside the cabin and he was about to brave the weather to dig them up and crack them open for marrow when he remembered he’d already done that several days ago.

A very long and worn out sounding sigh escaped from Chris and he sagged in the chair. His gaze came to rest on his rifle where it stood propped up in a corner. He had to find a way to get outside and hunt otherwise he would sit in this cabin and slowly fade away until either the cold or the hunger ended his miserable existence. Shortly he stood up and wandered over to the old table. Resting on the top in a mess of wood shavings and leather strips was his third and rather poor attempt at making a snowshoe. Chris stalked around the table, thinking furiously. This one thing was a crucial key to having some mobility and surviving the winter. Unfortunately, he’d only used snowshoes once and that one time had been many years ago and he knew next to nothing about how they were built. He’d seen pictures of the traditional native style of snowshoes and recalled a wood frame with leather webbing. He tried to mirror that design but had very little success. He had done a lot of thinking and had wracked his brain for anything he might have learned over the years that might come in handy but there wasn’t much there that dealt with this kind of winter survival. After breaking several of the wood frames he’d finally clued into the fact that he had to heat and steam the wood to get it flexible enough to bend without snapping. He had eventually managed to come up with something that approached a traditional teardrop shape and a hard lesson was learned when he discovered that he had to wedge a couple of pieces of wood across the frame to keep it in that shape as the wood cooled and dried. He had tied the ends of the frame together with strips of leather and that is where he began to have real problems. He was finding that the leather wasn’t strong enough, or maybe he just wasn’t using the right method. Chris picked up the snowshoe and eyed it carefully in the firelight. The webbing and bindings he had tried to make for his foot didn’t last very long before breaking or coming unraveled and it wasn’t a good thing to be caught out in the deep snows away from the cabin with a broken snowshoe. He was lucky that he didn’t get very far the first time. The snow had been up to his waist...

Even if he could come up with something better and stronger than leather, Chris was hesitant to trust his life to his homemade snowshoes. He would have to build two sets and pack the extras as a backup, just in case something bad happened. He thought about that for a minute and shrugged. Better to die fighting to survive than slowly wasting away inside the cabin, waiting for a rescue that was likely never to show.

Chris brought the partially finished snowshoe back to his seat in front of the fire. He stared at it for long moments, a thoughtful frown on his face as he contemplated how to build the webbing that had troubled him. He turned the frame over and over in his hands while his mind sorted through memories of pictures he had seen of native style snowshoes. They used leather for the bindings and webbing but obviously they had a technique that was better than the one he was trying to use. Long moments of hard thinking passed and suddenly and idea sprang into his mind as he stared into the fire.

Maybe, just maybe, rawhide was the answer. He’d never worked with the stuff before but he had watched Kendri make and use it to bind her spear points to the wooden shafts. From what he’d seen, the stuff was resilient and tough and had a tendency to shrink as it dried out. If he braided it and let it dry and harden, it could very well work better than the cured leather he’d been trying to use. He jumped to his feet, eager to try out this new idea. He needed water and one of the uncured deerskins, both of which were frozen into granite-like solidity outside. He grabbed the old blackened pot from the floor beside the hearth and nearly ran out the door with it.

The outside air was bitterly cold and stung eyes and nose as Chris packed as much snow into the pot as he could. Flakes of snow and ice crystals wafted in through the cabin door as he returned to set the pot on the edge of the stone hearth. He returned outside once more and after a brief glance at an unbelievably dark sky littered with the hard, glittering diamonds of stars he pulled a frozen deerskin from a snowdrift beside the door. This skin was from the deer he had shot three weeks ago. He and Kendri had long since picked it clean of any fragments of flesh and had tossed it out into the snow until the wolf could find the time and energy to cure it. The skin was as rigid as a piece of plywood and Chris had to fight to manoeuver it through the door. He propped the skin up against the chair in front of the fire and settled down to wait for it to thaw, the light from the fire reflected in his eyes as he thought about how exactly he was going to build his snowshoes.

 

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In a dark and unending landscape of trees and wind-sculpted snowdrifts, Kendri took a break from her hunt for food and paused for a moment underneath the dubious shelter of the low branches of a large spruce tree. She had hunted long and hard without success and she had grown worried at what the future might hold for both her and the human who had become trapped in the cabin. Game had become increasingly scarce in recent times and the snow was strangely devoid of any sort of animal tracks whatsoever. The forest held a despairing emptiness and nothing but the empty scents of trees and snow had come to her nose during her long trek. She had not even seen signs of rabbit or grouse in several hours. It seemed that only her meandering trail through the woods gave a clue that there was anything left in this forest that still lived and moved.

The stars in the sky above were hard pinpoints in a velvet black curtain. The crescent moon had gone to sleep in the west many hours earlier and darkness smothered the forest under a heavy hand. Trees cracked and groaned in the bitter cold and the winter air had sharp fangs that bit deeply into her nose. The world around her slept or hibernated in the cold, or maybe, she thought, it was dying under the heavy weight of this strange winter.

Kendri had never experienced a winter like this one. While the two other winters she had survived here in the mountains had been colder and snowier than the ones she remembered when she lived on the plains to the south, this particular winter was far worse than anything she could recall. Her prayers had gone unheeded and Kendri hung her head in despair. The Gods truly were angry with her and sought to teach her a hard lesson, she thought, and she wasn’t so sure if she would survive it.

She’ known hunger at times in her life, but the hunger that grew within her over the last week was a new and more sinister sensation. She had gone days without eating a thing and strange thoughts often clouded her mind. A seed of desperation had grown within her and she had seen the same thing reflected in Chris’s worried eyes. The poor human had grown thin and gaunt. He hadn’t looked or smelt well in some time and Kendri knew that his outlook was bleak. She often worried about him. She worried that the winter would soon claim his soul and she worried that he might use Thunder to strike her down and eat of her flesh if he realized that doing so might be the only way for him to survive for much longer. Some times, Kendri thought that it would be best for her to not return to the cabin at all but strike out on her own instead and try to find where all of the animals had gone.

Not for the first time Kendri wondered if her decision to bring the human back to the cabin had been the wrong one. Had she been on her own, she would probably not have had much trouble surviving the winter. There was an extra mouth to feed now, and that had really complicated things. She had thought that Chris’s weapon of Thunder would be a great help in hunting and for a while it had been. However, hunting success required animals to hunt and those had been very scarce recently. She also hadn’t expected Chris to become trapped in the cabin. His large size and weight had become a liability in the deep snows. With each step he sank deep into the drifts and struggled mightily just to make the next step. Kendri’s lighter weight and large feet gave her a big advantage in those situations. She was able to traverse the deep drifts without too much trouble. She sank into the snow, but nowhere near to the same depth as Chris. She’d seen the hopeless exhaustion in his eyes and knew that he really wanted to help but he just couldn’t. She could see how that nibbled away at him and lent to the despair he so often felt.

The outlook for surviving the winter had become very bleak, Kendri knew that well. However, not everything had turned bad this winter. She had been trying to teach the human her language over the last cycle of the moon. She hadn’t really known what to expect and the lessons had been slow and incredibly frustrating but there had been some success. Kendri’s heart had leapt at the joy of actually being able to communicate with someone again, even at a level that a second summer pup would have put to shame. One of the things she had missed the most over the last two years was being able to talk to someone and hear another voice other than her own. She had never liked being alone and here, at last, after two long and lonely seasons was someone she could talk to. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t of her people it just mattered that there was someone else around to ease the loneliness of the empty winter days. She sometimes even thought that it would be better to die of starvation in the company of a friend than it would be to survive and live alone.

Kendri blinked and yawned in her sanctuary. She was tired, but she knew better than to try and sleep in her current state. There was the possibility that if she did she might never wake up. She shook herself and stretched, feeling the cold’s icy grasp around her fingers and toes the longer she stayed immobile. She had to get moving again or risk becoming a permanent part of the landscape. She was hesitant to move from her hiding place though. The Watcher was out there somewhere, following her. She’d felt its presence for most of the day. The sensation of eyes in the trees had been much stronger today than most other days and many times her worried gaze had darted to the odd patterns of shadows in the forest, expecting to see something there. Each time her eyes found nothing and her nose caught only the scents of snow and trees. She would listen intently and wonder if she was actually hearing voices in the groaning creaking trees or if the hunger she felt was playing strange games with her mind.

Pushing her way through the thick spruce branches Kendri stood and stretched uneasily in the perpetual winter darkness. She could see well enough in the starlight that the shapes of trees were distinct against the snow. However, it was her nose that told her the real story of her surroundings and she trusted it more than her eyes in the dead of night. She moved away from her hiding spot slowly, following a trail she had been down before that she knew would lead her in a wide and long circle back to the cabin. The Watcher’s presence around her was strong and fluid and Kendri did her best to ignore it. The Watcher was a little worrisome but for now it was a benign entity. There were far more important matters to attend to and Kendri slowly picked her way through the silent forest. Her short spear she held carefully in her right hand and often used it to steady herself as she trudged through the deep snowdrifts. Her nose tracked her surroundings constantly and her ears listened for any signs of life among the dark trees while her eyes scanned the snow for any signs of life whatsoever.

And so Kendri stalked through the forest under the gaze of the glittering stars. Trees creaked and groaned around her as she searched for anything that might be edible. She wandered the untracked snow and her preoccupied mind wandered elsewhere until something brought her to a sudden stop. She sniffed the bitterly cold air currents and an ear twitched. A trail intersected her path a few paces ahead and it was relatively fresh. She knelt beside it and sniffed intently. A wolf trail, one of her four legged cousins had recently passed by here. She stared at the huge prints for a moment and the looked in the direction they led. There were other sets of prints in the snow as well, four, no, five more sets of big paw prints marked the snow several paces away, winding through the trees with long strides and a quick pace. Kendri moved forward and sniffed at the other trails carefully. Below the wolf tracks, trampled and almost obscured were the solitary tracks of a moose. Kendri’s head snapped up and hope swelled in her breast. Her cousins had been on a hunt. She turned and fairly ran along the tracks the pack had made in the snow. The cold air stung eyes, nose and tongue. If her four-legged cousins had succeeded in bringing down that moose, there might still be something left at the kill site for her and Chris to eat. Carrion meat was still meat and one couldn’t be picky in matters of survival. Her pace quickened as she followed the trail through the trees.

The chase had been a long one and Kendri followed the tracks of the moose and the wolf pack for almost two hours. She read the story of the hunt in the snow and knew that the moose had been weak and starving. Still, the wolves did not have an easy time on the hunt. One moose, even weakened by hunger or sickness was still a formidable foe. Soon, all of the tracks became flat out running trails and the snow became trampled and littered with sign. Tufts of moose hair and drops of blood soon marked the pristine snow. The wolves had chased their prey into an area of deep drifts and had used such things to their advantage. Moose had long legs but their hooves cut through the snow until the reached the forest floor. The wolves simply ran along the surface of the drifts and they tormented the hapless animal as it struggled in the deep snow. More and more blood littered the snow among the chaotic mess of tracks. The smell of blood made Kendri begin to drool, and she trotted along the trail, nose held high in the winter air.

The kill site was close Kendri could smell it. She crested a small rise and stopped cold. Six sets of yellow eyes regarded her suspiciously from around the corpse fo the fallen moose. She could sense the wolves unhappiness at being disturbed in their meal. Normally Kendri would have left them to their hard earned food but these were not normal circumstances. Here was food, and enough of it to last her and Chris for some time. Here was an opportunity for them to regain their strength as the Long Night settled over the world. Here was a gift from the Gods themselves, the precious gift of life and it would be more than foolish for her to turn her back on it.

It took only a millisecond for her to make her decision. Kendri took off at a flat out run, brandishing her spear and screaming her head off, running right into the midst of the wolves at their kill. The animals scattered, but did so unhappily. They stalked around her and watched from the shadows, trying to get up the nerve to retake the kill that was rightly theirs. Six sets of angry yellow eyes followed Kendri’s every movement as she stood at the kill with her spear clenched in numb hands.

Okay... That was really stupid, she thought, as the wary yellow eyes never left her. Now what am I supposed to do?

A low growl came from the leader of the pack and he edged closer. Kendri gulped nervously and stood her ground. There was too much at stake for her to give up now. She quickly stooped and grabbed a handful of snow and threw it at the alpha wolf. He snarled at her and jumped back, pacing back and forth suspiciously. Kendri growled back. The alpha of the pack stopped his pacing and looked at her uncertainly when he heard that. He cocked his head to the side and his yellow eyes bored right into hers. Kendri lifted her lips and flashed her teeth, letting him know that his stare was not appreciated. The Alpha didn’t flinch and Kendri started to get a little worried. At six to one odds she figured that the wolves wouldn’t be long in trying to retake their kill. She startled them, for sure, and they didn’t really understand what she was, but soon enough they would listen to their bellies and be on the attack. She had to get a fire going and quick. That was likely the only thing that would keep the wolves at bay.

She wasn’t quite sure how she was going to do that though. She didn’t want to turn her back on the wolves and the warm scent of blood and fresh meat from the kill was driving her nuts. Making a fire meant letting her guard down and likely an attack from the wolves.

Eventually, she moved slowly to nearby trees, her eyes never leaving the unhappy wolves. She picked as many of the smallest and driest brittle branches from the surrounding spruce trees as she could and carefully arranged them in a small fire bundle beside the carcass of the moose. When she looked up, the wolves had come closer, circling warily as their hunger began to overpower their fear.

Kendri quickly pulled her flint and steel from the pouch on her belt and began to strike the two in earnest. Bright flashes lit up the night and the wolves suddenly stopped to stare. Most of them were nervous but the alpha seemed to show little fear of the bright sparks and edged closer, a growl rumbling from his throat. He was pissed and she really couldn’t blame him. Had their positions been reversed Kendri would have felt the same as he. Kendri sensed the inevitability of an attack and slowly put the flint and steel back into her pouch, her eyes never leaving the alpha’s. The presence of the Watcher intensified, swirling around her in an invisible curtain.

She slowly began to reach for her spear and the alpha chose that exact moment to lunge.

Kendri had been ready for his move. Teeth snapped empty air where her arm had been and she brought the spear around in a wide arc to slam against the side of the wolf’s head. There was a solid thump and a pained yelp and the alpha went tumbling in the snow. He quickly regained his feet and winced and pawed at the side of his head, one eye half closed. Kendri growled low and long at him and held her spear at the ready in case he tried something else. Her heart hammered in her chest and her hands shook slightly. She tried not to show her fear and stared down the wolf. This went on for a long moment before the alpha began pacing nervously back and forth again. He was unsure about attacking again and Kendri breathed a sigh of relief. The rest of his pack watched warily from the shadows as Kendri turned her attention back to the fire.

One eye was always on the leader of the pack as she struck flint against steel. This time the wolf made no move towards her. A couple of tense moments passed before a thin tendril of smoke curled up from the fire bundle. Kendri knelt and blew on the embers and a tongue of yellow flame licked up through the branches. She added more branches to the fire and as the flames grew bigger the wolves melted away into the darkness. The alpha was the last to leave. He didn’t want to give up his kill but the mysteries of fire were too much for him and he left to lead his pack in search of easier prey.

Kendri ate her fill from the wolf kill once she was sure her four-legged cousins had left. There was still a lot of meat left there and she became reacquainted with the happiness that came with having a full belly. She had to get some of this meat home to Chris or somehow get the human out here, but she dared not leave the kill alone. The wolves would soon be back, she knew, and if she let the fire go out they would once again claim it as their own.

She wasn’t too far from the cabin, and she decided that after she got some much needed sleep she would build the fire up as high as she could and then go on the trek back to the cabin. She would bring some food for Chris and once he had eaten and gained some strength, she would lead him out here if she could and they would try to bring the rest of the kill back to the cabin.

That would not be an easy task but it was their only hope for surviving until more food could be found.